The Time Machine

The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us. His pale grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The fire burned brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and passed in our glasses.

“You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two ideas that are almost universally accepted. The geometry, for instance, they taught you at school is founded on a misconception.”

“Is not that rather a large thing to expect us to begin upon?” said Filby, an argumentative person with red hair.

“I do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable ground for it. You will soon admit as much as I need from you. You know of course that a mathematical line, a line of thickness nil, has no real existence. They taught you that? Neither has anything else. But a solid body may exist. And all real things—”

“So, if a man went round the world, he would come to the end of it” was all Filby’s remark, as he supposed, on the demonstration of a fourth dimension; and he was presently explaining that, though the fourth dimension could be conceived, it could never be perceived. “It is a length of time,” said the Time Traveller, “and a length of time it shall be.”