Page 275 - 1984

ked from the waist upwards, with her cheek pillowed on
her hand and one dark lock tumbling across her eyes. Her
breast rose and fell slowly and regularly.
‘Julia.’
No answer.
‘Julia, are you awake?’
No answer. She was asleep. He shut the book, put it care-
fully on the floor, lay down, and pulled the coverlet over
both of them.
He had still, he reflected, not learned the ultimate secret.
He understood HOW; he did not understand WHY. Chap-
ter I, like Chapter III, had not actually told him anything
that he did not know, it had merely systematized the knowl-
edge that he possessed already. But after reading it he knew
better than before that he was not mad. Being in a minority,
even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was
truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth
even against the whole world, you were not mad. A yellow
beam from the sinking sun slanted in through the window
and fell across the pillow. He shut his eyes. The sun on his
face and the girl’s smooth body touching his own gave him
a strong, sleepy, confident feeling. He was safe, everything
was all right. He fell asleep murmuring ‘Sanity is not sta-
tistical,’ with the feeling that this remark contained in it a
profound wisdom.
*****
When he woke it was with the sensation of having slept
for a long time, but a glance at the old-fashioned clock told
him that it was only twenty-thirty. He lay dozing for a while;

4 1984