I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time

Machine. The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who

are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round

him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in

ambush, behind his lucid frankness. Had Filby shown the model and

explained the matter in the Time Traveller's words, we should have

shown him far less scepticism. For we should have perceived his

motives; a pork butcher could understand Filby. But the Time

Traveller had more than a touch of whim among his elements, and we

distrusted him. Things that would have made the frame of a less

clever man seemed tricks in his hands. It is a mistake to do things

too easily. The serious people who took him seriously never felt

quite sure of his deportment; they were somehow aware that trusting

their reputations for judgment with him was like furnishing a

nursery with egg-shell china. So I don't think any of us said very

much about time travelling in the interval between that Thursday and

the next, though its odd potentialities ran, no doubt, in most of

our minds: its plausibility, that is, its practical incredibleness,

the curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion it

suggested. For my own part, I was particularly preoccupied with the

trick of the model. That I remember discussing with the Medical Man,

whom I met on Friday at the Linnaean. He said he had seen a similar

thing at Tubingen, and laid considerable stress on the blowing out

The Time Machine