the father led the child to his room and with the
help of his nurse undressed him and put him to bed.

"He had started back towards the terrace, when suddenly two arms
embraced his neck, while two sweet lips pressed against his.

"The story was finished."

With these words the story really ends.

Kuprin shows the same grace and the same delicate emotion in his
recent story, "The Garnet Necklace," a tale which is analogous to
the legend of the troubadour Geoffrey Rudel, which has been made
into a play by Rostand in his "Princesse Lointaine."

Geltov, a Russian petty official, loves the beautiful Princess
Sheine with a desperate love. After long hesitation he decides to
send her a garnet necklace, with a tender and respectful note
enclosed. Alas! his gift is returned to him and the husband of the
princess angrily threatens the naive lover. The latter has not the
strength to face the situation, and commits suicide. But before
dying he writes to the princess:--

"I saw you for the first time eight years ago in a theatre, and
since that time I have loved you with boundless passion. It is not
my fault, Princess, that God has sent this great happiness to me....
My life for the last eight years has been bound up in one
thought,--you. Believe what I say, believe me because I am going to
die.... I am neither a sick man nor an enthusiast.... I consider my
love for you as the greatest happiness that God could have given
me.... This happiness I have enjoyed for eight years. May God give
you happiness, and may nothing henceforth trouble you...."

This naive and touching letter moves the princess. At the grave of
her unhappy lover, she recalls the words of an old friend of her
father's: "Perhaps he was an abnormal man or a maniac....
Perhaps,--who knows?--your life was illumined by a love of which
women often dream, a kind of love that one does not see nowadays."

* * * * *

One can judge by these summaries how little Kuprin "pads" his
stories. Most of them are reduced to a commonplace anecdote, which
the author is careful not to ornament in the least. He respects
truth to such a degree that he offers it to his readers in its
disconcerting bareness. He would think that he was failing in his
duty as an observer if he disguised it by any literary mechanism.

His work, stripped of all general ideas and of all subjective
aspects, is of a rather curious impersonality. Nothing ever betrays
his in