--in which I fell and
fell and fell for evermore into the abyss of the sky.

I astonished Cavor at breakfast. I told him shortly, "I'm not coming with
you in the sphere."

I met all his protests with a sullen persistence. "The thing's too mad,"
I said, "and I won't come. The thing's too mad."

I would not go with him to the laboratory. I fretted bout my bungalow for
a time, and then took hat and stick and set out alone, I knew not whither.
It chanced to be a glorious morning: a warm wind and deep blue sky, the
first green of spring abroad, and multitudes of birds singing. I lunched
on beef and beer in a little public-house near Elham, and startled the
landlord by remarking apropos of the weather, "A man who leaves the world
when days of this sort are about is a fool!"

"That's what I says when I heerd on it!" said the landlord, and I found
that for one poor soul at least this world had proved excessive, and there
had been a throat-cutting. I went on with a new twist to my thoughts.

In the afternoon I had a pleasant sleep in a sunny place, and went on my
way refreshed. I came to a comfortable-looking inn near Canterbury. It
was bright with creepers, and the landlady was a clean old woman and took
my eye. I found I had just enough money to pay for my lodging with her. I
decided to stop the night there. She was a talkative body, and among many
other particulars learnt she had never been to London. "Canterbury's as
far as ever I been," she said. "I'm not one of your gad-about sort."

"How would you like a trip to the moon?" I cried.

"I never did hold with them ballooneys," she said evidently under the
impression that this was a common excursion enough. "I wouldn't go up in
one--not for ever so."

This struck me as being funny. After I had supped I sat on a bench by the
door of the inn and gossiped with two labourers about brickmaking, and
motor cars, and the cricket of last year. And in the sky a faint new
crescent, blue and vague as a distant Alp, sank westward over the sun.

The next day I returned to Cavor. "I am coming," I said. "I've been a
little out of order, that's all."

That was the only time I felt any serious doubt our enterprise. Nerves
purely! After that I worked a little more carefully, and took a trudge for
an hour every day. And at last, save for the heating in the furnace, our
labours were at an end.

Chapter 4

Inside the Sphere

"Go on," said Cavor, as I sat across the edge