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.
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