PART TWO

SECTION I

It's morning. Winston is heading for the men's room when he sees the dark-haired girl who frightened him so the other night. She's wearing a sling and falls on her injured arm. Winston helps her up. To his astonishment, she slips him a note which, after elaborate precautions, he reads and destroys. In her unformed handwriting she has written:

I love you.

He wants a few minutes alone to consider this, but Parsons joins him, babbling about decorations for Hate Week. All afternoon he is haunted by the girl's face. At the sight of the words I love you, "the desire to stay alive had welled up in him, and the taking of minor risks suddenly seemed stupid." He goes through the motions of the business day, hiding what he feels.

How are he and the girl going to meet without raising suspicions? Maybe he can bump into her in the canteen. The next week is one of fevered anticipation and worry. Finally they manage to sit at the same lunch table, speaking without looking up so anyone watching won't see.

They meet in Victory Square under the eyes of several telescreens, but crowd movement allows them to slip close and make plans as truckloads of Eurasian prisoners go by. They will take separate trains out of Paddington station and meet on a country lane Julia knows. For a second they hold hands.

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