The Time Machine

by H.G. Wells

But now her every motion appeared to be the exact inversion of her previous ones.

‘What a pity it is you’re not a writer of stories!’

The Time Traveller vanished three years ago. And, as everybody knows now, he has never returned.

But to me the future is still black and blank — is a vast ignorance,

And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers — shrivelled now, and brown and flat and brittle — to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.