‘You mean to say that that machine has travelled into the future?’ said Filby.

‘Into the future or the past—­I don’t, for certain, know which.’

After an interval the Psychologist had an inspiration.  ’It must have gone into the past if it has gone anywhere,’ he said.

‘Why?’ said the Time Traveller.

’Because I presume that it has not moved in space, and if it travelled into the future it would still be here all this time, since it must have travelled through this time.’

‘But,’ I said, ’If it travelled into the past it would have been visible when we came first into this room; and last Thursday when we were here; and the Thursday before that; and so forth!’

‘Serious objections,’ remarked the Provincial Mayor, with an air of impartiality, turning towards the Time Traveller.

‘Not a bit,’ said the Time Traveller, and, to the Psychologist:  ’You think.  You can explain that.  It’s presentation below the threshold, you know, diluted presentation.’

‘Of course,’ said the Psychologist, and reassured us.  ’That’s a simple point of psychology.  I should have thought of it.  It’s plain enough, and helps the paradox delightfully.  We cannot see it, nor can we appreciate this machine, any more than we can the spoke of a wheel spinning, or a bullet flying through the air.  If it is travelling through time fifty times or a hundred times faster than we are, if it gets through a minute while we get through a second, the impression it creates will of course be only one-fiftieth or one-hundredth of what it would make if it were not travelling in time.  That’s plain enough.’  He passed his hand through the space in which the machine had been.  ‘You see?’ he said, laughing.

We sat and stared at the vacant table for a minute or so.  Then the Time Traveller asked us what we thought of it all.

‘It sounds plausible enough to-night,’ said the Medical Man; ’but wait until to-morrow.  Wait for the common sense of the morning.’

‘Would you like to see the Time Machine itself?’ asked the Time Traveller.  And therewith, taking the lamp in his hand, he led the way down the long, draughty corridor to his laboratory.  I remember vividly the flickering light, his queer, broad head in silhouette, the dance of the shadows, how we all followed him, puzzled but incredulous, and how there in the laboratory we beheld a larger edition of the little mechanism which we had seen vanish from before our eyes.  Parts were of nickel, parts of ivory, parts had certainly been filed or sawn out of rock crystal.  The thing was generally complete, but the twisted crystalline bars lay unfinished upon the bench beside some sheets of drawings, and I took one up for a better look at it.  Quartz it seemed to be.

‘Look here,’ said the Medical Man, ’are you perfectly serious?  Or is this a trick—­like that ghost you showed us last Christmas?’

‘Upon that machine,’ said the Time Traveller, holding the lamp aloft, ’I intend to explore time.  Is that plain?  I was never more serious in my life.’