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would bring him. Nor did he seem shocked or become
offensively knowing when it was made clear that Winston wanted the room for
the purpose of a love-affair. Instead he looked into the middle distance
and spoke in generalities, with so delicate an air as to give the
impression that he had become partly invisible. Privacy, he said, was a
very valuable thing. Everyone wanted a place where they could be alone
occasionally. And when they had such a place, it was only common courtesy
in anyone else who knew of it to keep his knowledge to himself. He even,
seeming almost to fade out of existence as he did so, added that there were
two entries to the house, one of them through the back yard, which gave on
an alley.
Under the window somebody was singing. Winston peeped out, secure in
the protection of the muslin curtain. The June sun was still high in the
sky, and in the sun-filled court below, a monstrous woman, solid as a
Norman pillar, with brawny red forearms and a sacking apron strapped about
her middle, was stumping to and fro between a washtub and a clothes line,
pegging out a series of square white things which Winston recognized as
babies" diapers. Wh