“You don’t need to be fearful,” I said. “It’s quite common to have kitchens and the like underground in houses like this… The steps and railings are sturdy enough.”

Nebogipfel, anonymous behind his goggles, inspected the steps suspiciously. I supposed his caution came from an ignorance of the robustness of nineteenth-century technology — I had forgotten how strange my crude era must seem to him — but, nevertheless, something about his attitude disturbed me.

I was reminded, and it disconcerted me, of an odd fragment of my own childhood. The house where I grew up was large and rambling — impractical, actually — and it had underground passages which ran from the house to the stable block, larder and the like: such passages are a common feature of houses of that age. There were gratings set in the ground at intervals: black-painted, round things, covering shafts which led down to the passages, for ventilation. I recalled, now, my own fear, as a child, of those enclosed pits in the ground. Perhaps they had been simple air-shafts; but what, my childish imagination had prompted me, if some bony Hand came squirming through those wide bars and grabbed my ankle?

It occurred to me now — I think something in Nebogipfel’s cautious stance was triggering all this — that there was something of a similarity between those shafts in the grounds of my childhood, and the sinister wells of the Morlocks… Was that why, in the end, I had lashed out so at that Morlock child, in A.D. 657,208?

I am not a man who enjoys such insights into his own character! Quite unfairly, I snapped at Nebogipfel, “Besides, I thought you Morlocks liked the dark!” And I turned from him and walked up to the front door.

It was all so familiar — and yet disconcertingly different. Even at a glance I could see a thousand small changes from my day, eighteen years into the future. There was the sagging lintel I would later have replaced, for instance, and there the vacant site which would hold the arched lamp-holder I would one day install, at the prompting of Mrs. Watchets.

I came to realize, anew, what a remarkable business this time traveling was! One might expect the most dramatic changes in a flight across thousands of centuries — and such I had found — but even this little hop, of mere decades, had rendered me an anachronism.

“What shall I do? Should I wait for you?”

I considered Nebogipfel’s silent presence beside me. Wearing his goggles and with my jacket still drooped about him, he looked comical and alarming in equal measure! “I think there is more danger in the situation if you stay outside. What if a policeman were to spot you? — he might think you were some odd burglar.” Without his web of Morlock machinery, Nebogipfel was quite defenseless; he had launched himself into History quite as unprepared as I had been on my first jaunt. “And what of dogs? Or cats? I wonder what the average Tom of the eighteen-seventies would make of a Morlock. A fine meal, I should think… No, Nebogipfel. All in all, I think it would be safer if you stayed with me.”

“And the young man you are visiting? What of his reaction?”

I sighed. “Well, I have always been blessed by an open and flexible mind. Or so I like to think!… Perhaps I am soon to find out. Besides, your presence might convince me — him — of the veracity of my account.”

And, without allowing myself any further hesitation, I tugged at the bell-pull.

From within the house, I heard doors slamming, an irritable shout: “It’s all right, I’ll go!” — and then footsteps which clattered along the short corridor linking the rest of the house to my laboratory.

“It’s me,” I hissed at Nebogipfel. “Him. It must be late — the servants are abed.”

A key rattled in the lock of the door.

Nebogipfel hissed: “Your goggles.”

I snatched the offending anachronisms from my face, and jammed them into my trouser pocket just as the door swung open.

A young man stood there, his face glowing like a moon in the light of the single candle he carried. His glance over me, in my shirt-sleeves, was cursory; and the inspection he gave Nebogipfel was even more superficial. (So much for the powers of observation I prized!) “What the Devil do you want? It’s after one in the morning, you know.”

I opened my mouth to speak but my little rehearsed preamble disappeared from my mind.

Thus I confronted myself at the age of twenty-six!

I have become convinced that we all, without exception, use the mirror to deceive ourselves. The reflection we see there is so much under our control: we favor our best features, if unconsciously, and adjust our mannerisms into a pattern which our closest friend would not recognize. And, of course, we are under no compulsion to consider ourselves from less favorable angles: such as from the back of the head, or with our prominent nose in full, glorious profile.

Well, here was one reflection which was not under my control — and a troubling experience it was.

He was my height, of course: if anything, I was startled to find, I had shrunk a little in the intervening eighteen years. His forehead was odd: peculiarly broad, just as many people have pointed out to me, unkindly, through my life, and dusted with thin, mouse-brown hair, yet to recede or show any streaks of gray. The eyes were a clear gray, the nose straight, the jaw firm; but I had hardly been a handsome devil: he was naturally pale, and that pallor was enhanced by the long hours he had spent, since his formative years, in libraries, studies, teaching-rooms and laboratories.

I felt vaguely repulsed; there was indeed a little of the Morlock in me! And had my ears ever been so prominent?

But it was the clothes which caught my eye. The clothes!

He wore what I remembered as the costume of a masher: a short, bright red coat over a yellow and black waistcoat fixed with heavy brass buttons, boots tall and yellow, and a nosegay adorning his lapel.

Had I ever worn such garments? I must have done! — but anything further from my own sober style would have been difficult to imagine.

“Confound it,” I couldn’t help but say, “you’re dressed like a circus clown!”

He seemed uncertain — he saw something odd about my face, evidently — but he replied briskly enough: “Perhaps I should close this door in your face, sir. Have you climbed the Hill just to insult my clothing?”

I noticed that his nosegay was rather wilted, and I thought I could smell brandy on his breath. “Tell me. Is this Thursday?”

“That’s a very odd question. I ought to…”

“Yes?”

He held up the candle and peered into my face. So fascinated was he by me — by his own, dimly perceived self — that he ignored the Morlock: a man-thing from the distant future, standing not two yards away from him! I wondered if there was some clumsy Metaphor buried in this little scene: had I traveled into time, after all, only to seek out myself?

But I have no time for irony, and I felt rather embarrassed at even having framed such a Literary thought!

“It is Thursday, as it happens. Or was — we’re in Friday’s small hours now. What of it? And why don’t you know in the first place? Who are you, sir?”

“I’ll tell you who I am,” I said. “And” — indicated the Morlock, and evoked widened eyes from our reluctant host — “and who this is. And why I’m not sure what hour it is, or even what day. But first — may we come inside? For I would relish a little of your brandy.”

He stood there for perhaps half a minute, the candle wick sputtering in its pool of wax; and, in the distance, I heard the sigh of the Thames as it made its languid way through the bridges of Richmond. Then, at length, he said: “I should throw you into the street! — but…”