He struck me as being a very beautiful and graceful creature, but
indescribably frail. His flushed face reminded me of the more beautiful
kind of consumptive that hectic beauty of which we used to hear so
much. At the sight of him I suddenly regained confidence. I took my
hands from the machine.
V.
In the Golden Age
In another moment we were standing face to face, I and this fragile
thing out of futurity. He came straight up to me and laughed into my
eyes. The absence from his bearing of any sign of fear struck me at
once. Then he turned to the two others who were following him and spoke
to them in a strange and very sweet and liquid tongue.
There were others coming, and presently a little group of perhaps
eight or ten of these exquisite creatures were about me. One of them
addressed me. It came into my head, oddly enough, that my voice was too
harsh and deep for them. So I shook my head, and, pointing to my ears,
shook it again. He came a step forward, hesitated, and then touched my
hand. Then I felt other soft little tentacles upon my back and
shoulders. They wanted to make sure I was real. There was nothing in
this at all alarming. Indeed, there was something in these pretty
little people that inspired confidence a graceful gentleness, a certain
childlike ease. And besides, they looked so frail that I could fancy
myself flinging the whole dozen of them about like ninepins. But I made
a sudden motion to warn them when I saw their little pink hands feeling
at the Time Machine. Happily then, when it was not too late, I thought
of a danger I had hitherto forgotten, and reaching over the bars of the
machine I unscrewed the little levers that would set it in motion, and
put these in my pocket. Then I turned again to see what I could do in
the way of communication.
And then, looking more nearly into their features, I saw some further
peculiarities in their Dresden china type of prettiness. Their hair,
which was uniformly curly, came to a sharp end at the neck and cheek;
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