He, They

ETCHED IN MOONLIGHT--James Stephens--Macmillan ($2.50). Variety is color. Etched in moonlight there is no variety--only the alternating black and silver of sparse trees afar off, and the relentless greys of the vegetation underfoot. Striding through this spectral world they come, these three, to the deserted castle, where the jealous lover imprisoned his love and her betrothed. Fugitive, he roams the ends of the earth year after year, tormented by fear and remorse, until at last his cycle of self-recrimination brings him again to the silent castle and the "faces cut by the moon to a sternness of stone." The punishment that awaits him has been molded of modern psychoanalysis, but cast in fairy tale.

James Stephens, Irish romancer, mystic, poet, writes seven new stories and never names a character. So universal are the loves, fears, hates and desires, that the generic term suffices: a man, a woman, he, they. He brings to them much of the intensive insight into human fears and frailty, but less of the happy charm of his Crock of Gold. No happiness at all about "Hunger"--grim story of a woman's fortitude mocked by the inevitability of sheer want. First one child dies of starvation, then another, then the weary husband. And in the end there is nothing left but her crippled child, and bread lines. Again, in the mood of the Russians, a story called "Schoolfellows" recounts a good man accosted by his old schoolfellow who offers conversation in return for drink, more conversation in return for more drink. The good man evades, demurs, insults, but the other's desire for drink is greater than these, and nothing avails the man but flight.