The conflict of The Time Machine is between the Time Traveler and his house guests who do not trust the Time Traveler’s ideas.

The Time Traveler has a reputation of a trickster prior to the events in the story. This reputation causes the guests not to trust him. This is shown when the Narrator says that if another man named Filby had proposed the same ideas, everyone would most likely believed him. The Narrator also describes the Time Traveler as someone who is too clever to be trusted.

An effect of the distrust of the Time Traveler is that he does not get much support. When the Time Traveler presents his small-scale model of a time machine to his guests, they do not take it seriously. They believe that the Time Traveler is tricking them, and that the Time machine is a fake.

Another effect of the guests not believing in the Time Traveler is that not many of the guests from the first night come back to the Time Traveler’s house a second time. Only the Narrator and one other person come back for a second visit, although a few new guests arrive at the house. The fact that many of the men do not return, shows that they do not believe in the Time Traveler and they think time travel is not real.

A last effect of the Time Traveler not being trusted is that even the new guests do not believe in time travel, even though they have never even heard him speak about it before. This is represented when the Time Traveler shows up late to his dinner at his own house looking very weary and exhausted. When the guests see him, the Narrator suggests that he has been traveling in time, but this proposal is returned with remarks of disbelief and sarcasm, which shows that they already do not believe in time travel.