Page 268 - BRAVE NEW WORLD By Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

Brave New World By Aldous Huxley

air.

Looking down through the window in the

floor, the Savage could see Lenina's upturned face,

pale in the bluish light of the lamps. The mouth was

open, she was calling. Her foreshortened figure

rushed away from him; the diminishing square of

the roof seemed to be falling through the darkness.

Five minutes later he was back in his room.

From its hiding-place he took out his mouse-nibbled

volume, turned with religious care its stained and

crumbled pages, and began to read Othello. Othello,

he remembered, was like the hero of Three Weeks in

a Helicopter–a black man.

Drying her eyes, Lenina walked across the

roof to the lift. On her way down to the twenty-

seventh floor she pulled out her soma bottle. One

gramme, she decided, would not be enough; hers

had been more than a one-gramme affliction. But if

she took two grammes, she ran the risk of not

waking up in time to-morrow morning. She

compromised and, into her cupped left palm, shook

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