duty to
the Party' (yes, she had actually used that phrase). Quite soon he grew to
have a feeling of positive dread when the appointed day came round. But
luckily no child appeared, and in the end she agreed to give up trying, and
soon afterwards they parted.
Winston sighed inaudibly. He picked up his pen again and wrote:

She threw herself down on the bed, and at once, without any kind of
preliminary in the most coarse, horrible way you can imagine, pulled up her
skirt. I--

He saw himself standing there in the dim lamplight, with the smell of
bugs and cheap scent in his nostrils, and in his heart a feeling of defeat
and resentment which even at that moment was mixed up with the thought of
Katharine's white body, frozen for ever by the hypnotic power of the Party.
Why did it always have to be like this? Why could he not have a woman of
his own instead of these filthy scuffles at intervals of years? But a real
love affair was an almost unthinkable event. The women of the Party were
all alike. Chastity was as deep ingrained in them as Party loyalty. By
careful early conditioning, by games and cold water, by the rubbish that
was dinned into them at school and in the Spies and the Youth League, by
lectures, parades, songs, slogans, and martial music, the natural feeling
had been driven out of them. His reason told him that there must be
exceptions, but his heart did not believe it. They were all impregnable, as
the Party intended that they should be. And what he wanted, more even than
to be loved, was to break down that wall of virtue, even if it were only
once in his whole life. The sexual a