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him within five minutes of reading the note; but now, with
time to think, he went over them one by one, as though lay-
ing out a row of instruments on a table.
Obviously the kind of encounter that had happened this
morning could not be repeated. If she had worked in the Re-
cords Department it might have been comparatively simple,
but he had only a very dim idea whereabouts in the building
the Fiction Department lay, and he had no pretext for going
there. If he had known where she lived, and at what time
she left work, he could have contrived to meet her some-
where on her way home; but to try to follow her home was
not safe, because it would mean loitering about outside the
Ministry, which was bound to be noticed. As for sending
a letter through the mails, it was out of the question. By
a routine that was not even secret, all letters were opened
in transit. Actually, few people ever wrote letters. For the
messages that it was occasionally necessary to send, there
were printed postcards with long lists of phrases, and you
struck out the ones that were inapplicable. In any case he
did not know the girl’s name, let alone her address. Final-
ly he decided that the safest place was the canteen. If he
could get her at a table by herself, somewhere in the middle
of the room, not too near the telescreens, and with a suf-
ficient buzz of conversation all round—if these conditions
endured for, say, thirty seconds, it might be possible to ex-
change a few words.
For a week after this, life was like a restless dream. On
the next day she did not appear in the canteen until he
was leaving it, the whistle having already blown. Presum-