THE TIME MACHINE

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grotesque enough, garlanded with flowers, and surrounded by an
eddying mass of bright, soft-colored robes and shining white limbs,
in a melodious whirl of laughter and laughing speech.

'The big doorway opened into a proportionately great hall hung with
brown. The roof was in shadow, and the windows, partially glazed
with coloured glass and partially unglazed, admitted a tempered
light. The floor was made up of huge blocks of some very hard white
metal, not plates nor slabs--blocks, and it was so much worn, as I
judged by the going to and fro of past generations, as to be deeply
channelled along the more frequented ways. Transverse to the length
were innumerable tables made of slabs of polished stone, raised
perhaps a foot from the floor, and upon these were heaps of fruits.
Some I recognized as a kind of hypertrophied raspberry and orange,
but for the most part they were strange.

'Between the tables was scattered a great number of cushions.