“Well, I know her under her skin⁠—subcutaneously, you see: blood pressure, tissue tension, lymphatic circulation, all that sort of thing. I’ve good reason to. It’s the superficies makes the difficulty. Have you ever noticed her walk? She slinks. It’s characteristic, shows in her face⁠—take the eyes, for example, not to mention the complexion, though that is tricky too. I don’t mean their colour, I am speaking of the cut, and the way they sit in the face. You’d say the eye slit was cut obliquely, but it only looks so. What deceives you is the epicanthus, a racial variation, consisting in a sort of ridge of integument that runs from the bridge of the nose to the eyelid, and comes down over the inside corner of the eye. If you take your finger and stretch the skin at the base of the nose, the eye looks as straight as any of ours. Quite a taking little dodge⁠—but as a matter of fact, the epicanthus can be traced back to an atavistic vestige⁠—it’s a developmental arrest.”

“So that’s it.” Hans Castorp said. “I never knew that⁠—but I’ve wondered for a long time what it is about eyes like that.”