A Pair of Blue Eyes

On the slope was Knight, his hat on his head. He was on his hands and knees, trying to climb back to the level ground. The rain had wetted the shaly surface of the incline. A slight superficial wetting of the soil hereabout made it far more slippery to stand on than the same soil thoroughly drenched.

Stephen romance, Knight's cliff crisis, Elfride's concealment, Luxellian marriage, and crypt confrontation form a tragedy of withheld truth with classical inevitability, so plot scores 88.

These eyes were blue; 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.

Elfride, Stephen, Knight, Swancourt, and Luxellian are typed but warmly individuated — blue-eyed heroine whose healing outruns candour — so cast scores 87.

Hold tightly to me," he said. She flung her arms round his neck with such a firm grasp that whilst he remained it was impossible for her to fall. "Don't be flurried," Knight continued. "So long as we stay above this block we are perfectly safe. Wait a moment whilst I consider what we had better do."

Coastal walks and letter intervals between opening and crypt; suspense spikes at the precipice then resumes Victorian delay, so pace scores 84.

These eyes were blue; 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.

Eye-as-soul prose and the rain-lubricated shaly cliff rank among Hardy's sharpest early set-pieces, so prose scores 90.

precipice it was dispersed in spray before it was half-way down, and falling like rain upon projecting ledges, made minute grassy meadows of them. At the bottom the water-drops soaked away amid the debris of the cliff. This was the inglorious end of the river.

Endelstow cliffs, Luxellian crypt, Targan Bay, Dover lights — Cornish-Wessex coast as moral precipice, so world scores 89.

These eyes were blue; 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.

Elfride's eyes as sublimation of all of her lock reader attention before suitor rivalry — lyrical rather than shock hook, so hook scores 86.

On the slope was Knight, his hat on his head. He was on his hands and knees, trying to climb back to the level ground. The rain had wetted the shaly surface of the incline.

The cliff hang as simultaneous physical and psychological suspense anticipates modern thriller set-pieces inside a Victorian marriage plot, so innov scores 85.

Beside the latter was the dark form of a man, kneeling on the damp floor, his body flung across the coffin, his hands clasped, and his whole frame seemingly given up in utter abandonment to grief. He was still young—younger, perhaps, than Knight—and even now showed how graceful was his figure and symmetrical his build.

Knight and Stephen confronting Elfride's untarnished coffin — rivals united only in belated grief — is among Hardy's bleakest early closures, so ending scores 91.