he could see an aged man,
his face a mass of grizzled hair, standing upright with wrists crossed in
front of him, as though he were used to having them bound together. It was
almost time for Winston and the girl to part. But at the last moment, while
the crowd still hemmed them in, her hand felt for his and gave it a
fleeting squeeze.
It could not have been ten seconds, and yet it seemed a long time that
their hands were clasped together. He had time to learn every detail of her
hand. He explored the long fingers, the shapely nails, the work-hardened
palm with its row of callouses, the smooth flesh under the wrist. Merely
from feeling it he would have known it by sight. In the same instant it
occurred to him that he did not know what colour the girl's eyes were. They
were probably brown, but people with dark hair sometimes had blue eyes. To
turn his head and look at her would have been inconceivable folly. With
hands locked together, invisible among the press of bodies, they stared
steadily in front of them, and instead of the eyes of the girl