“Yes,” demanded Hampton, also taking a step toward the beauty doctor, “explain it—­if you dare.”

Cynthia suppressed a little cry of fear.  For a moment I thought that the two young men would forget everything in the heat of their feelings.

“Just a second,” interposed Kennedy, quickly stepping between them.  “Let me do the talking.”  There was something commanding about his tone as he looked from one to the other of us.

“The trouble with Miss Virginia,” he added, deliberately, “seems to lie in one of what the scientists have lately designated the ’endocrine glands’—­in this case the pituitary.  My X-ray pictures show that conclusively.

“Let me explain for the benefit of the rest.  The pituitary is an oval glandular body composed of two lobes and a connecting area, which rest in the sella turcica, enveloped by a layer of tissue, about under this point.”  He indicated the red spot on her forehead as he spoke.  “It is, as the early French surgeons called it, l’organe enigmatique.  The ancients thought it discharged the pituita, or mucus, into the nose.  Most scientists of the past century asserted that it was a vestigial relic of prehistoric usefulness.  To-day we know better.

“One by one the functions of the internal secretions are being discovered.  Our variously acquired bits of information concerning the ductless glands lie before us like the fragments of a modern picture puzzle.  And so, I may tell you, in connection with recent experimental studies of the role of the pituitary, Doctor Cushing and other collaborators at Johns Hopkins have noticed a marked tendency to pass into a profoundly lethargic state when the secretion of the pituitary is totally or nearly so removed.”

Kennedy now had every eye riveted on him as he deftly led the subject straight to the case of the poor girl before us.

“This,” he added, with a wave of his hand toward her, “is much like what is called the Frohlich syndrome—­the lethargy, the subnormal temperature, slow pulse, and respiration, lowered blood pressure, and insensitivity, the growth of fat and the loss of sex characteristics.  It has a name—­dystrophia adiposogenitalis.”

He nodded to Doctor Haynes, but did not pause.  “This case bears a striking resemblance to the pronounced natural somnolence of hibernation.  And induced hypopituitarism—­under activity of the gland—­produces a result just like natural hibernation.  Hibernation has nothing to do with winter, or with food, primarily; it is connected in some way with this little gland under the forehead.

“As the pituitary secretion is lessened, the blocking action of the fatigue products in the body be-comes greater and morbid somnolence sets in.  There is a high tolerance of carbohydrates which are promptly stored as fat.  I am surprised, Doctor Haynes, that you did not recognize the symptoms.”

A murmur from Mrs. Blakeley cut short Doctor Haynes’s reply.  I thought I noticed a movement of the still face on the white bed.