I get the impression that HG Wells was a more than a bit of a monster, but those few paragraphs strike me as awfully good writing.
Yeah. They choke me up every time.
Perhaps it’s because of the lines that follow, which are perhaps the most poignant ever committed to paper:
“And strangest of all is it to hold my wife’s hand again, and to think that I have counted her, and that she has counted me, among the dead.”