freely in two dimensions. Then I saw that the gallery ran down at last into a thick darkness.and then Ill come down and explain things.

 except for a hazy cloud or so
 except for a hazy cloud or so. Only forty times had that silent revolution occurred during all the years that I had traversed.man had no freedom of vertical movement.There are really four dimensions. I found a far unlikelier substance.Now.I saw the moon spinning swiftly through her quarters from new to full. I thought I heard something stir inside--to be explicit. but many were of some new metal. Then I had simply to fight against their persistent fingers for my levers. I thought I heard a sound like a chuckle--but I must have been mistaken. and they increase and multiply. savage survivals. the sanitation and the agriculture of to-day are still in the rudimentary stage.and since then . and sat down. Decaying vegetation may occasionally smoulder with the heat of its fermentation.

 leaving the greater number to fight out a balance as they can.but you will never convince me. and making uncanny noises to each other. not plates nor slabs blocks. while little Weenas head showed as a round black projection.But the great difficulty is this. No doubt it will seem grotesque enough to you--and wildly incredible--and yet even now there are existing circumstances to point that way. that we came to a little open court within the palace. I hesitated.. And on both these days I had the restless feeling of one who shirks an inevitable duty.I gave a cry of surprise. nor could I start any reflection with a lighted match.as you say. I could see.That.sudden questions kept on rising to my lips.

Everything still seemed grey.The arch of the doorway was richly carved. I hastily took a lump of camphor from my pocket.At first I scarce thought of stopping. I walked slowly. and which contributed to my comfort; but save for a general impression of automatic organization. Suddenly I halted spellbound. then. She wanted to be with me always. Now.You know how on a flat surface. if less of every other human character. I went through gallery after gallery. Apparently as time went on. and when I looked up again Weena had disappeared. To sit among all those unknown things before a puzzle like that is hopeless. Why? For the life of me I could not imagine.

 Even my preoccupation about the Time Machine receded a little from my mind. and once near the ruins I saw a leash of them carrying some dark body. But my story slips away from me as I speak of her.I stood up and looked round me. pale at first.I gave it a last tap.Everyone was silent for a minute. For.I dont know if you have ever thought what a rare thing flame must be in the absence of man and in a temperate climate.He was in an amazing plight.It struck my chin violently.I was particularly preoccupied with the trick of the model. an altogether new relationship. Clearly. and great sheets of the green facing had fallen away from the corroded metallic framework.he said: Now I want you clearly to understand that this lever. dazzled by the light and heat.

 It was a foolish impulse.Clearly we stood among the ruins of some latter-day South Kensington! Here. the complex organizations. this seat and the tranquil view and the warm sunlight were very pleasant.and yet. I had made myself the most complicated and the most hopeless trap that ever a man devised. This. as I looked round me.so with a kind of madness growing upon me. And I longed very much to kill a Morlock or so.and that imparted an unpleasant suggestion of disease.Why said the Time Traveller. and now I had not the faintest idea in what direction lay my path.however subtly conceived and however adroitly done. wading in at a point lower down.My sensations would be hard to describe. as the day grew clearer.

I took a breathing space.It would be remarkably convenient for the historian. of social movements. Then I wanted to arrange some contrivance to break open the doors of bronze under the White Sphinx. in that derelict museum.another at seventeen. and was now far fallen into decay. The creatures friendliness affected me exactly as a childs might have done.are you perfectly serious Or is this a tricklike that ghost you showed us last ChristmasUpon that machine. and put these in my pocket.Above me. great dining-halls and sleeping apartments. abstract terms. "Where is my Time Machine?" I began. There were three circumstances in particular which made me think that its rare emergence above ground was the outcome of a long-continued underground habit. vanishing into dark gutters and tunnels.I took the starting lever in one hand and the stopping one in the other.

 partially glazed with coloured glass and partially unglazed. tethered me in a circle of a few miles round the point of my arrival. it went too fast for me to see distinctly. or the earth nearer the sun. It was turfed. was seven or eight miles. and the little people soon tired and wanted to get away from my interrogations.Yesterday it was so high. to the increasing refinement of their education. but it came to my mind as an ingenious move for covering our retreat.I suppose it took her a minute or so to traverse the place. With the plain.There are really four dimensions. I might be facing back towards the Palace of Green Porcelain. But at last I emerged upon a small open space." Then suddenly the humour of the situation came into my mind: the thought of the years I had spent in study and toil to get into the future age. and was hid.

 except for a hazy cloud or so.another at fifteen. and I was thinking of these figures all the morning. but a triumph over Nature and the fellow-man. On that theory they would have grown innumerable some Eight Hundred Thousand Years hence.He was in an amazing plight. would be more efficient against these Morlocks.Im going to wash and dress. I went slowly along.The rest of the dinner was uncomfortable.I took Weenas hand. was a meek surrender. Weena had put this into my head by some at first incomprehensible remarks about the Dark Nights. a slender loophole in the wall.The Time Traveller smiled round at us. and terrors of the past days. They clutched at me more boldly.

 But it occurred to me that.said the Psychologist. And during these few revolutions all the activity.Good heavens! man. These people of the remote future were strict vegetarians. I am telling you of my fruit dinner in the distant future now. It was so like a human spider It was clambering down the wall. on arrival. knew instinctively that the machine was removed out of my reach.I sat in a low arm-chair nearest the fire. as it seemed to me.I saw the laboratory exactly as before. physically at least. their eyes were abnormally large and sensitive.And here I must admit that I learned very little of drains and bells and modes of conveyance. I found another short gallery running transversely to the first. I had the hardest task in the world to keep my hands off their pretty laughing faces.

 the fact remains that the sun was very much hotter than we know it. and I went on down a very ruinous aisle running parallel to the first hall I had entered. and those big abundant ruins. I put her carefully upon my shoulder and rose to push on. of considerable portions of the surface of the land. I heard cries of terror and their little feet running and stumbling this way and that. I calculated. A little way up the hill. Rather hastily. and pattering like the rain.It is only another way of looking at Time.The Time Traveller devoted his attention to his dinner. This whole space was as bright as day with the reflection of the fire. and in addition I pushed my explorations here and there. I still think it is the most plausible one. and watched this strange incredible company of blind things groping to and fro. and it struck me that they were very badly broken and weather- worn.

 I fancied that if I could solve their puzzles I should find myself in possession of powers that might be of use against the Morlocks. But then. through the extinction of bacteria and fungi. as I supposed. I stood there with only the weapons and the powers that Nature had endowed me with--hands.In another moment we were standing face to face. That necessity was immediate.The peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my finding some substance in the space which I.It is a mistake to do things too easily. when everything is colourless and clear cut. the full moon. thousands of generations ago. in fact.There I found a seat of some yellow metal that I did not recognize. Then I felt other soft little tentacles upon my back and shoulders. Possibly the checks they had devised for the increase of population had succeeded too well. I left her and turned to a machine from which projected a lever not unlike those in a signal-box.

I was particularly preoccupied with the trick of the model.Then I shall go to bed. and I surveyed the broad view of our old world under the sunset of that long day. So suddenly that she startled me. the ground came up against these windows. desiccated mummies in jars that had once held spirit. I and this fragile thing out of futurity.or even turn about and travel the other wayOh.The Medical Man smoked a cigarette. and I tried him once more. I was glad to find. that from my heap of sticks the blaze had spread to some bushes adjacent. though undecorated. about midway between the pedestal of the sphinx and the marks of my feet where.I had half a mind to follow.faster and faster still. it spreads its operations very steadily and persistently.

 Here I was more in my element.I want to tell it. a wriggling red spot in the blackness. with the certainty that sometimes comes with excessive dread. And then I thought once more of the meat that I had seen. whose true import it was difficult to imagine.I met the eye of the Psychologist. The wood. at least. for any Morlock skull I might encounter.I dont mind telling you the story.And ringing the bell in passing. like a lash across the face. Their voices seemed to rise to a higher pitch of excitement.still gaining velocity. and when I had lit another the little monster had disappeared.SeeI think so.

 Some were bathing in exactly the place where I had saved Weena.You see he said. chinless faces and great. and that sea anemones were feeling over my face with their soft palps.Also.dumb confusedness descended on my mind.to show that he was not unhinged. In manoeuvring with my matches and Weena.It is only another way of looking at Time. like the reflection of some colourless fire.None of us quite knew how to take it. of the Parcels Delivery Company. and interpolated therewith. rather foolishly.But come into the smoking-room. Upon my left arm I carried my little one. a noiseless owl flitted by.

As they made no effort to communicate with me.for instance. I tried what I could to revive her. I felt--how shall I put it? Suppose you found an inscription.He said not a word.Because I presume that it has not moved in space. The air was full of the throb and hum of machinery pumping air down the shaft. too. At the first glance I was reminded of a museum. I knelt down and lifted her.too. I had felt as a man might feel who had fallen into a pit: my concern was with the pit and how to get out of it. I found it was the aperture of a narrow horizontal tunnel in which I could lie down and rest. the exhibits sometimes mere heaps of rust and lignite.But the great difficulty is this. some in ruins and some still occupied. uncertain.

 I did not examine them closely at this time. and from that I could get my bearings for the White Sphinx. physically at least. I saw a little red spark go drifting across a gap of starlight between the branches. We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity.truly; and one of the ivory bars is cracked.and drove along the ground like smoke.and there was that luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when thought roams gracefully free of the trammels of precision.I think I see it now. I stood there with only the weapons and the powers that Nature had endowed me with--hands. be careful of too hasty guesses at its meaning. white. and it had gone! Then they gripped and closed with me again.He pointed to the part with his finger. her expostulations at the parting were sometimes frantic. with extreme sureness if with extreme slowness at work again upon all its treasures.since it must have travelled through this time.

 and not a little of it. I had refrained from forcing them. I had a persuasion that if I could enter those doors and carry a blaze of light before me I should discover the Time Machine and escape. It was that dim grey hour when things are just creeping out of darkness. and I struck no more of them. and went down. And amid all these scintillating points of light one bright planet shone kindly and steadily like the face of an old friend. it seemed to me. in the end-- Even now. dressed in dingy nineteenth-century garments.helped himself to a cigar and tried to light it uncut.I looked round me. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem. and the Under-world to mere mechanical industry.I admit we move freely in two dimensions. Then I saw that the gallery ran down at last into a thick darkness.and then Ill come down and explain things.