Now, I wondered, was I ready? I demanded advice of poor Mrs. Watchets, though I would not tell her, of course, where I was intending to travel. That good woman — stolid, square, remarkably plain, and yet with a faithful and imperturbable heart took a look inside my knapsack, crammed as it was, and she raised one formidable eyebrow. Then she made for my room and returned with spare socks and underwear, and — here I could have kissed her! — my pipe, a set of cleaners, and the jar of tobacco from my mantel.

Thus, with my usual mixture of feverish impatience and superficial intelligence — and with an unending reliance on the good will and common sense of others — I made ready to return into time.

Bearing my knapsack under one arm and my Kodak under the other, I made towards my laboratory, where the Time Machine waited. When I reached the smoking-room, I was startled to find that I had a visitor: one of my guests of the previous evening, and perhaps my closest friend — it was the Writer of whom I have spoken. He stood at the center of the room in an ill-fitting suit, with his tie knotted about as rough as you could imagine, and with his hands dangling awkward by his side. I recalled again how, of the circle of friends and acquaintances whom I had gathered to serve as the first witnesses to my exploits, it was this earnest young man who had listened with the most intensity, his silence vibrant with sympathy and fascination.

I felt uncommon glad to see him, and grateful that he had come — that he had not shunned me as eccentric, as some might, after my performance of the evening before. I laughed, and, burdened as I was with sack and camera, I held out an elbow; he grasped the joint and shook it solemnly. “I’m frightfully busy,” I said, “with that thing in there.”

He studied me; I thought there was a sort of desperation to believe in his pale blue eyes. “But is it not some hoax? Do you really travel through time?”