also indicate the different factors which render the accomplishment of the main character's purpose difficult, dangerous, or possibly disastrous. The story-proper does not begin until the character having come to some conclusion, seeing some necessity for action, meets the first obstacle which in any way delays or prevents that action. In "The Haunted Lady" this "something to be accomplished" does not appear until the paragraph made up of lines 733 to 737. Therefore the main narrative-question of the story is "Can Gretchen Innes bring herself to clear the name of Maurice Greer?" Everything up to that point is Beginning, because everything up to that point is necessary to the reader's understanding of the situation facing Gretchen Innes. The Ending of the Story consists of the answer to the main narrative-question. It contains the Decisive Act. In an episode (a meeting without clash, between the district attorney of Santa Barbara County and Gretchen Innes) this answer is made clear. It is "Yes." There can be no doubt in the minds of the readers as to the outcome of the struggle, for they have been made by the author to see the lady as she enters the office of the district attorney (lines 746 to 758), they have heard the confession from her own lips (lines 773 to 784). All the essentials of the plot are contained in lines 733 to 784. The narrative question is made apparent, the answer to that narrative question is made apparent. But between plotting and presentation there is a vast difference. The plot is the author's concern; but the presentation is intended to satisfy the reader, to make clear to him the details which the author boils down to an outline in seeing the story. Clearly, if interest consists of suspense regarding the outcome of a struggle, and if it be granted that struggles are ordinarily the material making up the Body of a story; in order to have any suspense there must be a Body to the story. Yet, here is a story which is interesting, which keeps the reader in suspense, and which has no Body. How can one account for such a paradox? It is explained

easily enough if you understand the Laws of Interest. Suspense comes from struggles of which the outcome is in doubt; but those struggles may be the Bodies of Scenes. What the author of "The Haunted Lady" has done is to borrow from Peter to pay Paul; she has given to the Beginning of her story an interest which ordinarily belongs to the Body of a story, the Interest of Suspense. She has made out of the Beginning two such scenes, one an encounter with her husband (lines 1 to 705), the other an inner struggle (lines 706 to 789), or an encounter between forces at variance within her, one her desire to be rid of this haunting sense of guilt of being a "rotter" (lines 704 to 705), the other her desire to keep her husband's love by keeping his name free from scandal. Each scene in the Beginning shows something to be accomplished; it shows the attempt of the character to accomplish it; it shows the result of that attempt as being inconclusive, as merely plunging the character into another situation with something still to be accomplished before the story is ended. Ordinarily such encounters or scenes come in the Body of a story; but in "The Haunted Lady" they are combined with the Beginning, with the giving of information to the audience of readers, so that no Body scenes as such are necessary. The only possible kind of Body scene would be a scene of inner struggle, and such a scene the readers have just observed. They could n't stand another very well; and it would be difficult to get a variation upon the preceding one which would advance the narrative. The author, therefore, did the only artistic thing possible. Having raised the main narrative question she answered it at once.

In the two scenes the result of the encounter is made clear by an act of the character or of a force opposed to that character which plunges the character into a new situation, leaving the outcome of the main struggle still in doubt. In the first scene this haunted lady is endeavoring to escape from this sense of being haunted. But her husband's act, which is the decisive act of that scene

(lines 667 to 671) leaves her still with something to accomplish, and with a sense of frustration. The effect of this act of her husband's upon her is shown by her actions in lines 672 to 705.

In the very first of the "Cases in Craftsmanship" I pointed out that one of the steps in every scene is to show the Decisive act by which the narrative question raised in the Beginning of that Scene is answered, and that one of the subdivisions of this step is to show the effect of that step upon the actors in the scene, upon the main character and upon the other characters. This fourth step of a scene will be incidents or episodes, not encounters. Encounters contain clash which causes suspense, because the interest in that portion of the scene is not the interest of suspense, but the interest of satisfaction. The reader ought to be satisfied artistically as to the result of the struggle. This satisfaction is intellectual rather than emotional; examined coldly and analytically the actions or reactions of the character should bear examination. Given the circumstances, that ought to be inevitably the way in which the characters would have reacted.

It is interesting to see how this fourth step is handled by the author of "The Haunted Lady." The story is divided into two scenes, each with its incidents or episodes for a fourth step.

Scene 1 occupies lines 1 to 705; the fourth step is composed of incidents, which occupy lines 672 to 705.

Scene 2 occupies lines 706 to 1091; the fourth step is composed of episodes, or meetings without clash, as follows:

episode 1. Gretchen meets the District

Combined these episodes make up the Ending which is composed of the Decisive Act and its results. But episode 1 is the fourth step of the second scene; whereas episode 2, 3, 4, and 5 are the fourth step of the whole story.

In discussing the composition of the Concord Hymn, President-Emeritus Charles W. Eliot spoke of the action therein described, and its "infinite reverberations." In this story the Decisive Act by which the main character answers the narrative question of the story has "infinite reverberations," and the story is not finished until these "infinite reverberations" have been made clear to the reader. There are more people involved than the main character; and furthermore no story is really ended until all the questions raised in the Beginning have been answered. In this way the Story varies from the Scenes within the story. In the Scene, ordinarily only one conflict is foreshadowed, only one possibility of disaster is apparent; only one minor narrative-question is raised, and at the end of the scene this question is answered. In the main story, many questions are raised in the readers' mind; they may be answered one by one through scenes in the Body of the Story; that is the ordinary way. In this case, however, they must be answered within the Ending of the Story, because there is no Body.

The question that arises in the mind of the aspiring author at this point is: "How can I keep such meetings interesting enough to hold the reader, when I am denied the use of suspense which usually comes from clash, an interest usually confined to the Body of a Story?" The author of "The Haunted Lady" answers this by showing that while suspense ordinarily comes from clash, it is fundamentally concerned with the outcome of a meeting between hostile forces, or forces regarded as hostile. This interest will be intensified in proportion as this hostility has been emphasized. But it will be always as it affects the main character. Taking each group of forces, you will see that such hostility has been foreshadowed by the author, in the con

sciousness of the main character. The effect upon Burke is that he goes on playing the game as always; but Gretchen does not know whether he has heard the news of the confession. On lines 708 to 724 the author makes clear to the reader that Gretchen believes that Burke "could never forgive the woman whom the world would know as Maurice Greer's alibi." On lines 390 to 403 the hostility of Mrs. William Wolsey Grant is made evident when she says "As if a woman who would receive Maurice Greer, with his reputation, between two and four in the morning deserved any protection." The episode with the maid is merely "stage business," purely preparatory for the meeting with the group representing "the whole world" who would thereafter know her as "Maurice Greer's alibi." But throughout all these meetings the uncertainty as to the outcome as it affects the character's happiness is still in doubt. It is not until the final episode that the reader is made aware beyond question, as Gretchen is made aware also beyond question, that to a

person of Burke Innes's standards of sportsmanship the very act by which Gretchen thinks she has ruined her whole life and future happiness is in reality an act which guarantees that future happiness.

This story is an extremely valuable one for the person who is interested in writing stories of "character," who wants to show the reactions of characters under the stress of great emotional crises. It illustrates that the Ending may be prolonged, provided there is suspense. But this suspense must be a legitimate suspense, and must have a definite bearing upon the main narrative question of the story.

In this issue I am concerned with the Ending. I might say some things about the Beginning which would be useful to aspiring authors; but I do not wish to confuse the issues. Next month I shall have a very interesting example of a Beginning, one of the most illuminating I have examined for some time.