light, as
it came and went, and came again, was partially hampered by their
oppressive lids and lashes; and of these the under lid was much fuller
than it usually is with English women. This enabled her to indulge in
reverie without seeming to do so--she might have been believed capable
of sleeping without closing them up. Assuming that the souls of men and
women were visible essences, you could fancy the colour of Eustacia's
soul to be flamelike. The sparks from it that rose into her dark pupils
gave the same impression.

The mouth seemed formed less to speak than to quiver, less to quiver
than to kiss. Some might have added, less to kiss than to curl. Viewed
sideways, the closing-line of her lips formed, with almost geometric
precision, the curve so well known in the arts of design as the
cima-recta, or ogee. The sight of such a flexible bend as that on grim
Egdon was quite an apparition. It was felt at once that the mouth did
not come over from Sleswig with a band of Saxon pirates whose lips met
like the two halves of a muffin. One had fancied that such lip-curves
were mostly lurking underground in the South as fragments of forgotten
marbles. So fine were the lines of her lips that, though full, each
corner of her mouth was as clearly cut as the point of a spear. This
keenness of corner was only blunted when she was given over to sudden
fits of gloom, one of the phases of the night-side of sentiment which
she knew too well for her years.

Her presence brought memories of such things as Bourbon roses, rubies,
and tropical midnight; her moods recalled lotus-eaters and the march in
Athalie; her motions, the ebb and flow of the sea; her voice, the viola.
In a dim light, and with a slight rearrangement of her hair, her general
figure might have stood for that of either of the higher female deities.
The new moon behind her head, an old helmet upon it, a diadem of
accidental dewdrops round her brow, would have been adjuncts sufficient
to strike the note of Artemis, Athena, or Hera respectively, with as
close an approximation to the antique as that which passes muster on
many respected canvases.

But celestial imperiousness, love, wrath, and fervour had proved to be
somewhat thrown away on netherward Egdon. Her power was limited, and the
consciousness of this limitation had biassed her development. Egdon was
her Hades, and since coming there she had imbibed much of what was dark
in its tone, though inwardly and eternally