He consented. I nodded to him and, without further ado, I set off down the corridor to my laboratory.

So I took my leave of the world of 1891. I have never been a man of deep attachments, and I am not one for flowery farewells; but had I known I should never see the Writer again — at least, not in the flesh — I fancy I would have made something more of a ceremony of it!

I entered my laboratory. It was laid out something like a milling-shop. There was a steam lathe attached to the ceiling, which powered various metal-turning machines by means of leather bands; and fixed to benches around the floor were smaller lathes, a sheet-metal stamp, presses, acetylene welding sets, vices and the like. Metal parts and drawings lay about on the bench, and abandoned fruits of my labors lay in the dust of the floor, for I am not by nature a tidy man; lying at my feet now, for example, I found the nickel bar which had held me up before my first sojourn into time — that bar which had proved to be exactly one inch short, so that I had had to get it remade.

I had spent much of two decades of my life in this room, I reflected. The place was a converted conservatory, giving onto the garden. It was built on a framework of slender, white-painted wrought iron, and had once given a decent view of the river; but I had long since boarded up the panes, to assure myself of a consistency of light and to deter the curious eyes of my neighbors. My various tools and devices loomed in that oily darkness, and now they reminded me of my half-glimpses of the great machines in the caverns of the Morlocks. I wondered if I myself might not have some morbid streak of the Morlock! When I returned, I resolved, I would kick out the boards and glaze up the room once again, and make it a place of Eloi light rather than Morlock gloom.