ixed 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
direction, it moves, in the service of the sense of sight; it receives
the messages of the world. But expression is outward, and the eye has it
not. There are no windows of the soul, there are only curtains; and
these show all things by seeming to hide a little more, a little less.
They hide nothing but their own secrets.

But, some may say, the eyes have emotion inasmuch as they betray it by
the waxing and contracting of the pupils. It is, however, the rarest
thing, this opening and narrowing under any influences except those of
darkness and light. It does take place exceptionally; but I am doubtful
whether those who talk of it have ever really been attentive enough to
perceive it. A nervous woman, brown-eyed and young, who stood to tell
the news of her own betrothal, and kept her manners exceedingly