“And where do you live in Sydney?” Huey asked, but before the answer came the Professor burst into the room.
“I have found it out, my dear. Really it’s the most simple thing in the world as plain as the nose on your face, so to speak and no one has ever seen it before. It’s a scientific discovery of the highest importance, and will rank with the laws of gravity and natural selection. Really the law is self-evident.”
“What law, Pro? What are you excited about?”
“You know, my dear, I have often told you that, valuable as phrenology is as a guide to character, it yet only tells a man’s possibilities, not what a man is. This must be looked for in other directions, and I have always held that physiognomy was the clue. But although we all acknowledge that character is shown by the face, no one has yet pointed out the simple rule by which we are all, even a little child, more or less guided. Now, that rule I have just thought out, and I venture to predict it will revolutionize our social organization.”
“Well, what is the rule? Tell us, Pro, quickly, or you will have found out something else and forgotten all about it.”
“The rule, my dear, is this—That where those changes, that take place in the face of every person to express the varied emotions, are found as a permanent part of the face when in repose, then that person has that emotion in a correspondingly high degree, and it follows that as the character is changeable, so is the face. One is an exact index of the other. Let me illustrate. You yourself, who have large love of admiration, an organ becoming and proper of your sex, have the mouth depressed between the nose and chin. Now, when you smile, as you are now doing, the corners of the mouth are drawn back, as it were, giving to any mouth a slight appearance of what, to you, is a permanent feature. And when a person is resolute or determined, is it not a fact, Mr. Gosper, that the teeth are clenched and the jaw projected? Are not these also the signs of resolution and determination? And so on, all through. I could multiply instances indefinitely, but one has only to stand before a mirror, and like an actor, express the different sentiments, to learn the whole key to physiognomy in a few minutes.”
“But what do you mean to do about it, Pro?” inquired Bertha, smiling incredulously.
“When we get back to Sydney I will write a book. I am inclined to think you are right as to the want of sympathetic appreciation of the public for lectures. Literature is the teacher of to-day. To literature I will turn my energies.”
Huey, who was in no ways interested in the “new law,” here found means to escape, and with a smile of adieu from Bertha that haunted him for many days to come, descended the stairs, and as he descended there seemed to be a light going out of his life.
She would leave the next morning; how much that meant he commenced to realize. The flames of a new hope, brightened in her presence, flickered and dimmed as he left her. With the descending stairs the hope grew smaller and smaller, and once descended, seemed to go right out.