beautiful race that I already knew.
Then came troublesome doubts. Why had the Morlocks taken my Time
Machine? For I felt sure it was they who had taken it. Why, too, if the
Eloi were masters, could they not restore the machine to me? And why
were they so terribly afraid of the dark? I proceeded, as I have said,
to question Weena about this Underworld, but here again I was
disappointed. At first she would not understand my questions, and
presently she refused to answer them. She shivered as though the topic
was unendurable. And when I pressed her, perhaps a little harshly, she
burst into tears. They were the only tears, except my own, I ever saw
in that Golden Age. When I saw them I ceased abruptly to trouble about
the Morlocks, and was only concerned in banishing these signs of her
human inheritance from Weena s eyes. And very soon she was smiling and
clapping her hands, while I solemnly burnt a match.
IX.
The Morlocks
It may seem odd to you, but it was two days before I could follow up
the new-found clue in what was manifestly the proper way. I felt a
peculiar shrinking from those pallid bodies. They were just the
half-bleached colour of the worms and things one sees preserved in
spirit in a zoological museum. And they were filthily cold to the
touch. Probably my shrinking was largely due to the sympathetic
influence of the Eloi, whose disgust of the Morlocks I now began to
appreciate.
The next night I did not sleep well. Probably my health was a little
disordered. I was oppressed with perplexity and doubt. Once or twice I
had a feeling of intense fear for which I could perceive no definite
reason. I remember creeping noiselessly into the great hall where the
little people were sleeping in the moonlight that night Weena was among
them and feeling reassured by their presence. It occurred to me even
then, that in the course of a few days the moon must pass through its
last quarter, and the nights grow dark, when the appearances of these
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