So I came back. For a long time I must have lain unconscious on the machine. Then day and night began to flash past again, the sun became golden and the sky blue, and I could breathe more easily. The hands on the dials went backwards. At last I began to recognise the familiar buildings of our own time, and day and night came slower and slower. Then the old walls of my laboratory came round me. Very gently, I slowed the machine down.
I saw one little thing that seemed strange. When I set out, as I told you, Mrs Watchett seemed to shoot across the laboratory like a rocket. As I came back, I passed that same minute again. But now everything she did was backwards. She moved quietly up the laboratory, back first, and disappeared through the door where she had come in.
Then I stopped the machine. My old laboratory was around me, with my tools just as I had left them. I got off very shakily and sat down on my bench, trembling. Perhaps I had fallen asleep there, and the whole thing was a dream.
And yet not quite! The machine had started from the south-east corner of the laboratory. Now it stood in the north-west corner, against the opposite wall. That is exactly the distance from my little lawn to the base of the White Sphinx, where the Morlocks had carried my machine.
At last I got up and came along the passage here, limping, because my heel still hurt. I saw the newspaper on the table by the door and found that the date was today. The clock said almost eight. I heard your voices and the noise of plates. I felt so sick and weak. Then I smelt good meat, and I opened the door. You know the rest. I washed and ate, and now I am telling you the story.