sudden deep conviction, Syme
will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks
too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will
disappear. It is written in his face.
Winston had finished his bread and cheese. He turned a little sideways
in his chair to drink his mug of coffee. At the table on his left the man
with the strident voice was still talking remorselessly away. A young woman
who was perhaps his secretary, and who was sitting with her back to
Winston, was listening to him and seemed to be eagerly agreeing with
everything that he said. From time to time Winston caught some such remark
as 'I think you're so right, I do so agree with you', uttered in a youthful
and rather silly feminine voice. But the other voice never stopped for an
instant, even when the girl was speaking. Winston knew the man by sight,
though he knew no more about him than that he held some important post in
the Fiction Department. He was a man of about thirty, with a muscular
throat and a large, mobile mouth. His head was thrown back a little, and
because of the angle at which he was sitting, his spectacles caught the
light and presented to Winston two blank discs instead of eyes. What was
slightly horrible, was that from the stream of sound that poured out of his
mouth it was almost impossible to distinguish a single word. Just once
Winston caught a phrase -- 'complete and final elimination of Goldsteinism'
-- jerked out very rapidly and, as it seemed, all in one piece, like a line
of type cast solid. For the rest it was just a noise, a quack-quack-
quacking. And yet, though you could not actually hear what the man was
saying,