[Lenny]

interested in public events to notice what was happening. By
lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything,
and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue
behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a
bird.



VI

It had happened at last. The expected message had come. All his life,
it seemed to him, he had been waiting for this to happen.
He was walking down the long corridor at the Ministry and he was
almost at the spot where Julia had slipped the note into his hand when he
became aware that someone larger than himself was walking just behind him.
The person, whoever it was, gave a small cough, evidently as a prelude to
speaking. Winston stopped abruptly and turned. It was O'Brien.
At last they were face to face, and it seemed that his only impulse
was to run away. His heart bounded violently. He would have been incapable
of speaking. O'Brien, however, had continued forward in the same movement,
laying a friendly hand for a moment on Winston's arm, so that the two of
them were walking side by side. He began speaking with the peculiar grave
courtesy that differentiated him from the majority of Inner Party members.
'I had been hoping for an opportunity of talking to you,' he said. 'I
was reading one of your Newspeak articles in the Times the other day. You
take a scholarly interest in Newspeak, I believe?'
Winston had recovered part of his self-possession. 'Hardly scholarly,'
he said. 'I'm only an amateur. It's not my subject. I have never had
anything to do