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oozing out of
his eyes. He looked up at O'Brien.
'I have not betrayed Julia,' he said.
O'Brien looked down at him thoughtfully. 'No,' he said; 'no; that is
perfectly true. You have not betrayed Julia.'
The peculiar reverence for O'Brien, which nothing seemed able to
destroy, flooded Winston's heart again. How intelligent, he thought, how
intelligent! Never did O'Brien fail to understand what was said to him.
Anyone else on earth would have answered promptly that he had betrayed
Julia. For what was there that they had not screwed out of him under the
torture? He had told them everything he knew about her, her habits, her
character, her past life; he had confessed in the most trivial detail
everything that had happened at their meetings, all that he had said to her
and she to him, their black-market meals, their adulteries, their vague
plottings against the Party -- everything. And yet, in the sense in which
he intended the word, he had not betrayed her. He had not stopped loving
her; his feelings towards her had remained the same. O'Brien had seen what
he meant without the need for explanation.
'Tell me,' he said, 'how soon will they shoot me?'
'It might be a long time,' said O'Brien. 'You are a difficult case.
But don't give up hope. Everyone is cured sooner or later. In the end we
shall shoot you.'



IV

He was much better. He was growing fatter and stronger every day, if
it was proper to speak of days.
The white light and the humming sound were the same as ever, but the
cell was a little more comfortable than the others he had been in. There
was a pillow and a mattress on the plank bed, and a stool to sit on. They
had given him a bath, and