brown are, in fact, of some such mixed colour, generally spotted in, and
the effect is vivacious. All the more if the speckled iris has a dark
ring to enclose it.

Nevertheless, the eye of mixed colour has always a definite character,
and the mingling that looks green is quite unlike the mingling that looks
grey; and among the greys there is endless difference. Brown eyes alone
are apart, unlike all others, but having no variety except in the degrees
of their darkness.

The colour of eyes seems to be significant of temperament, but as regards
beauty there is little or nothing to choose among colours. It is not the
eye, but the eyelid, that is important, beautiful, eloquent, full of
secrets. The eye has nothing but its colour, and all colours are fine
within fine eyelids. The eyelid has all the form, all the drawing, all
the breadth and length; the square of great eyes irregularly wide; the
long corners of narrow eyes; the pathetic outward droop; the delicate
contrary suggestion of an upward turn at the outer corner, which Sir
Joshua loved.

It is the blood that is eloquent, and there is no sign of blood in the
eye; but in the eyelid the blood hides itself and shows its signs. All
along its edges are the little muscles, living, that speak not only the
obvious and emphatic things, but what reluctances, what perceptions, what
ambiguities, what half-apprehensions, what doubts, what interceptions!
The eyelids confess, and reject, and refuse to reject. They have
expressed all things ever since man was man.

And they express so much by seeming to hide or to reveal that which
indeed expresses nothing. For there is no message from the eye. It has