56 EXPRESSION. 
confidence which seems to say, “You and I 
understand.” 
There appears to me to be one exception to the 
rule that a downward face and upward eye give the 
idea of concealment ; and it is in mental absorption 
when the head happens to be bent forwards and 
the eyes staring into space. Yet it is an exception 
more apparent than real, the glance having less 
the appearance of proceeding from the face than of 
having quitted it altogether. What catches the 
eye most in such circumstances is the relaxation, 
the absence of expression, from the mind being too 
much occupied with its musing to devote attention 
to attitude or feature. The head only bends when 
the relaxation of the previous attitude allows it to 
fall forwards; and it falls as readily backwards 
when the attitude has been favourable to that 
movement. The eyes also are probably nearly in 
the position of muscular inaction. In the dead the 
position of the eyes is more turned upwards than 
they would be in looking directly forwards during 
life, and their strange stare seems to depend less on 
the perfect movelessness than on a slight divergence 
of their axes. Further, it is known that the condi- 
ion of rest of the adjustments within the eyeball is 
when the focus is set for the infinitely distant, 
which requires the axes of the eyes to be parallel ; 
