“Are you not satisfied?” asked the professor.
Christopher sighed deeply: “No, I cannot say that I am; it is certainly shown that there is a change, the exact nature of which is by no means clearly defined. Some future discovery will, I am sure, enable the scientist to see the action of the brain as plainly as we now know the action of the heart.”
He nervously ran his fingers through his hair while speaking; he withdrew his hand with an exclamation of horror: it was covered with hairs and a cloud of the same enveloped him.
“Heaven! Is all my hair falling out?” he cried in dismay.
The professor calmly observed: “I have noticed it for some time; when you first came your mustache and eyebrows were very thick and long, but have been gradually thinning, I thought several times that I would speak of it, but we have had so much else to talk about, and the most of your moods have been so peculiar—” he smiled as he paused.
“Oh, it’s all right for you to laugh! You wouldn’t if you were in my shoes! Whatever will Maria say?”
He stood ruefully looking at his reflection in the mirror. “I look like a kid!” said he scornfully. “I have been so busy with this confounded foolishness that I did not think of looking in a glass. Pshaw! I’m going to drop this nonsense and go home; I know that my wife is worried about me before this time. I haven’t written to her since I came here. I didn’t want her to know what I was doing.”
“You ought to have told her, though,” said the professor.
“You don’t know Maria!” said Christopher sadly. “Confound it! How my head aches! Now that I take time to think of it, I know that it has ached for a week.”
The following morning Christopher was very ill, and was not able to leave his room for weeks. When at last he arose, he giddily crossed the room to the mirror, and looked at himself; he sank into a chair with a groan; not a vestige of hair remained on head or face.