even
crossed his mind that she might be an agent of the Thought Police. That, it
was true, was very unlikely. Still, he continued to feel a peculiar
uneasiness, which had fear mixed up in it as well as hostility, whenever
she was anywhere near him.
The other person was a man named O'Brien, a member of the Inner Party
and holder of some post so important and remote that Winston had only a dim
idea of its nature. A momentary hush passed over the group of people round
the chairs as they saw the black overalls of an Inner Party member
approaching. O'Brien was a large, burly man with a thick neck and a coarse,
humorous, brutal face. In spite of his formidable appearance he had a
certain charm of manner. He had a trick of resettling his spectacles on his
nose which was curiously disarming -- in some indefinable way, curiously
civilized. It was a gesture which, if anyone had still thought in such
terms, might have recalled an eighteenth-century nobleman offering his
snuffbox. Winston had seen O'Brien perhaps a dozen times in almost as many
years. He felt deeply drawn to him, and not solely because he was intrigued
by the contrast between O'Brien's urbane manner and his prize-fighter's
physique. Much more it was because of a secretly held belief -- or perhaps
not even a belief, merely a hope -- that O'Brien's political orthodoxy was
not perfect. Something in his face sugges