scend for the solution of my difficulties. And withal I
was absolutely afraid to go! As I hesitated, two of the beautiful
Upper-world people came running in their amorous sport across the
daylight in the shadow. The male pursued the female, flinging
flowers at her as he ran.

'They seemed distressed to find me, my arm against the overturned
pillar, peering down the well. Apparently it was considered bad form
to remark these apertures; for when I pointed to this one, and tried
to frame a question about it in their tongue, they were still more
visibly distressed and turned away. But they were interested by my
matches, and I struck some to amuse them. I tried them again about
the well, and again I failed. So presently I left them, meaning to
go back to Weena, and see what I could get from her. But my mind was
already in revolution; my guesses and impressions were slipping and
sliding to a new adjustment. I had now a clue to the import of these
wells, to the ventilating towers, to the mystery of the ghosts; to
say nothing of a hint at the meaning of the bronze gates and the
fate of the Time Machine! And very vaguely there came a suggestion
towards the solution of the economic problem that had puzzled me.

'Here was the new view. Plainly, this second species of Man was
subterranean. There were three circumstances in particular which
made me think that its rare emergence above ground was the outcome
of a long-continued underground habit. In the first place, there was
the bleached look common in most animals that live largely in the
dark--the white fish of the Kentucky caves, for instance. Then,
those large eyes, with that capacity for reflecting light, are
common features of nocturnal things--witness the owl and the cat.
And last of all, that evident confusion in the sunshine, that hasty
yet fumbling awkward flight towards dark shadow, and that peculiar
carriage of the head while in the light--all reinforced the theory
of an extreme sensitiveness of the retina.

'Beneath my feet, then, the earth must be tunnelled enormously, and
these tunnellings were the habitat of the new race. The presence of
ventilating shafts and wells along the hill slopes--everywhere, in
fact, except along the river valley--showed how universal were its
ramifications. What so natural, then, as to assume that it was in
this artificial Underworld that such work as was necessary to the
comfort of the daylight race was done? The notion was so plausible