The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter – often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter – in the eye.
– Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre, Chapter 27. Jane makes this comment the moment she comes to the agonizing decision to leave Rochester. A furious Rochester has just seized her by the arm and waist and she raises her eye to him and looks into his fierce face. Her comment is an allusion the French proverb, “The eyes are the mirror of the soul.”