’As I stood there in the gathering dark I thought that in this simple explanation I had mastered the problem of the world—­mastered the whole secret of these delicious people.  Possibly the checks they had devised for the increase of population had succeeded too well, and their numbers had rather diminished than kept stationary.  That would account for the abandoned ruins.  Very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough—­as most wrong theories are!

V

’As I stood there musing over this too perfect triumph of man, the full moon, yellow and gibbous, came up out of an overflow of silver light in the north-east.  The bright little figures ceased to move about below, a noiseless owl flitted by, and I shivered with the chill of the night.  I determined to descend and find where I could sleep.

’I looked for the building I knew.  Then my eye travelled along to the figure of the White Sphinx upon the pedestal of bronze, growing distinct as the light of the rising moon grew brighter.  I could see the silver birch against it.  There was the tangle of rhododendron bushes, black in the pale light, and there was the little lawn.  I looked at the lawn again.  A queer doubt chilled my complacency.  “No,” said I stoutly to myself, “that was not the lawn.”

’But it was the lawn.  For the white leprous face of the sphinx was towards it.  Can you imagine what I felt as this conviction came home to me?  But you cannot.  The Time Machine was gone!

’At once, like a lash across the face, came the possibility of losing my own age, of being left helpless in this strange new world.  The bare thought of it was an actual physical sensation.  I could feel it grip me at the throat and stop my breathing.  In another moment I was in a passion of fear and running with great leaping strides down the slope.  Once I fell headlong and cut my face; I lost no time in stanching the blood, but jumped up and ran on, with a warm trickle down my cheek and chin.  All the time I ran I was saying to myself:  “They have moved it a little, pushed it under the bushes out of the way.”  Nevertheless, I ran with all my might.  All the time, with the certainty that sometimes comes with excessive dread, I knew that such assurance was folly, knew instinctively that the machine was removed out of my reach.  My breath came with pain.  I suppose I covered the whole distance from the hill crest to the little lawn, two miles perhaps, in ten minutes.  And I am not a young man.  I cursed aloud, as I ran, at my confident folly in leaving the machine, wasting good breath thereby.  I cried aloud, and none answered.  Not a creature seemed to be stirring in that moonlit world.

’When I reached the lawn my worst fears were realized.  Not a trace of the thing was to be seen.  I felt faint and cold when I faced the empty space among the black tangle of bushes.  I ran round it furiously, as if the thing might be hidden in a corner, and then stopped abruptly, with my hands clutching my hair.  Above me towered the sphinx, upon the bronze pedestal, white, shining, leprous, in the light of the rising moon.  It seemed to smile in mockery of my dismay.