Dorothea stuns a silly, wilful and selfish young woman with her powerful, radiant kindness and, having meant to disdain her, the girl is undone by this unexpected sympathy. I liked the simile of blue flowers conveying the helplessness of her gaze.

‘… her eyes met Dorothea’s as helplessly as if they had been blue flowers.’

Source: George Eliot, Middlemarch (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 853

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