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