concluding passage. Therefore, it is necessary in the
short-story, and advisable in the chapters of a novel, to reserve for
the ultimate position one of the most inherently important features of
the narrative; for surely it is bad art to waste the natural emphasis
of position by casting it upon a subsidiary feature.

The importance of this simple expedient will readily be recognized if
the student will gather together a hundred short-stories written by
acknowledged masters and examine the last paragraph of each. Consider
for a moment the final sentences of "Markheim," which we have already
quoted in another connection:--

"He confronted the maid upon the threshold with something like a
smile.

"'You had better go for the police,' said he: 'I have killed your
master.'"

The entire story is summed up in the concluding phrase; and the final
sentence rings ever after in the reader's memory.

Here, to cite a new example, is the conclusion of Poe's "The Masque of
the Red Death":--

"And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come
like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the
blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing
posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with
that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired.
And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion
over all."

The sense of absolute ruin which we derive from this impressive
paragraph is, to a considerable extent, due to the emphasis it gains
from its finality. The effect would unquestionably be subtracted from,
if another paragraph should be appended and should steal away its
importance of position.

In order to derive the utmost emphasis from the terminal position, the
great artist Guy de Maupassant, in his short-stories, developed a
periodicity of structure by means of which he reserved the solution of
the narrative, whenever possible, until the final sentences. This
periodic structure is employed, for example, in his well-known story
of "The Necklace" ("_La Parure_"). It deals with a poor woman who
loses a diamond necklace that she has borrowed from a rich friend in
order to wear at a ball. She buys another exactly like it and returns
this in its place. For ten years she and her husband labor day and
night to pay off the debts they have incurred to purchase the
substituted jewels. After the debts are all paid, the woman tells h