They were Iberians in blood, but improved; purified
and refined as by fire; gentleized and spiritualized, and to
the lower types down to the aboriginals, as is the bright
consummate flower to leaf and stem and root.
Often and often we are teased and tantalized and mocked by
that old question:
Oh! so old -
Thousands of years, thousands of years,
If all were told -
of black and blue eyes; blue versus black and black versus
blue, to put it both ways. And by black we mean black with
orange-brown lights in it - the eye called tortoise-shell; and
velvety browns with other browns, also hazels. Blue includes
all blues, from ultramarine, or violet, to the palest blue of
a pale sky; and all greys down to the grey that is almost
white. Our preference for this or that colour is supposed
to depend on nothing but individual taste, or fancy, and
association. I believe it is something more, but I do find
that we are very apt to be swayed this way and that by the
colour of the eyes of the people we meet in life, according as
they (the people) attract or repel us. The eyes of the two
little girls were black as polished black diamonds until
looked at closely, when they appeared a beautiful deep brown
on which the black pupils were seen distinctly; they were so
lovely that I, predisposed to prefer dark to light, felt that
this question was now definitely settled for me - that black
was best. That irresistible charm, the flame-like spirit
which raised these two so much above the others - how could it
go with anything but the darkest eyes!
But no sooner was the question thus settled definitely and for
all time, to my very great satisfaction, than it was unsettled
again. I do not know how this came about; it may have been
the sight of some small child's blue eyes looking up at me,
like the arch blue eyes of a kitten, full of wonder at the
world and everything in it;
"Where did you get those eyes so blue?"
"Out of the sky as I came through";
or it may have been the sight of a harebell; and perhaps it
came from nothing but the "waste shining of the sky." At all
events, there they were, remembered again, looking at me from
the past, blue eyes that were beautiful and dear to me, whose
blue colour was associated with every sweetness and charm in
child and woman and with all that is best and highest in human
souls; and I could not and had no wish to resist their appeal.
Then came a new experience of the eye that is blue - a meeting
with one who almost seemed to be less flesh than spirit.
