Elfride Swancourt was a girl whose emotions lay very near the surface. (…) One point in her, however, you did notice : that was her eyes. In them was seen a sublimation of all of her ; it was not necessary to look farther : there she lived.
These eyes were blue ; heavenly blue.
Her eyes were, more truely, blue as autumn distance — blue as the blue we see between the retreating mouldings of hills and woody slopes on a sunny September morning. A misty and shady blue, that had no beginning or surface, and was looked into rather than at. Of the two, indeed, perhaps this earthly blue is the more beautiful.
Thomas Hardy, 1877