1 For the white leprous face of the sphinx was towards it.
2 If you want your machine again you must leave that sphinx alone.
3 As I approached the pedestal of the sphinx I found the bronze valves were open.
4 Above me towered the sphinx, upon the bronze pedestal, white, shining, leprous, in the light of the rising moon.
5 In three strides I was after him, had him by the loose part of his robe round the neck, and began dragging him towards the sphinx.
6 I remember running violently in and out among the moonlit bushes all round the sphinx, and startling some white animal that, in the dim light, I took for a small deer.
7 I found a groove ripped in it, about midway between the pedestal of the sphinx and the marks of my feet where, on arrival, I had struggled with the overturned machine.
8 It was of white marble, in shape something like a winged sphinx, but the wings, instead of being carried vertically at the sides, were spread so that it seemed to hover.
9 I determined to put the thought of my Time Machine and the mystery of the bronze doors under the sphinx as much as possible in a corner of memory, until my growing knowledge would lead me back to them in a natural way.
10 Then someone suggested that their plaything should be exhibited in the nearest building, and so I was led past the sphinx of white marble, which had seemed to watch me all the while with a smile at my astonishment, towards a vast grey edifice of fretted stone.
11 I have a memory of horrible fatigue, as the long night of despair wore away; of looking in this impossible place and that; of groping among moon-lit ruins and touching strange creatures in the black shadows; at last, of lying on the ground near the sphinx and weeping with absolute wretchedness.