as
he had feared. He did not know why the Thought Police should choose to
deliver their messages in such a fashion, but perhaps they had their
reasons. The thing that was written on the paper might be a threat, a
summons, an order to commit suicide, a trap of some description. But there
was another, wilder possibility that kept raising its head, though he tried
vainly to suppress it. This was, that the message did not come from the
Thought Police at all, but from some kind of underground organization.
Perhaps the Brotherhood existed after all! Perhaps the girl was part of it!
No doubt the idea was absurd, but it had sprung into his mind in the very
instant of feeling the scrap of paper in his hand. It was not till a couple
of minutes later that the other, more probable explanation had occurred to
him. And even now, though his intellect told him that the message probably
meant death -- still, that was not what he believed, and the unreasonable
hope persisted, and his heart banged, and it was with difficulty that he
kept his voice from trembling as he murmured his figures into the
speakwrite.
He rolled up the completed bundle of work and slid it into the
pneumatic tube. Eight minutes had gone by. He re-adjusted his spectacles on
his nose, sighed, and drew the next batch of work towards him, with the
scrap of paper on top of it. He flattened it out. On it was written, in a
large unformed handwriting:

I love you.

For several seconds he was too stunned even to throw the incriminating
thing into the memory hole. When he did so, although he knew very well the
danger of showing too much interest, he could not resist reading it once
again, just to make sure that the word