"The Day Is Dark" is a story of death, as it comes to a family of young people—all of whom, for reasons which never become clear, find themselves unwilling to live…. It is not for the reader to reason why. He is made free of their romantic depressions, their agonized soliloquies, their sense of doom, loss and betrayal. He is told particularly of their inability to find any secure relationship with anyone else, but he is not permitted to peep behind the scenes. This author is not interested in psychology. The dark moods of her people are presented as accomplished facts, without a past and with no future but extinction.

"Three Travelers" admits us to the inner world of a playwright and his wife, who encounter and are enchanted by a brilliant pianist…. This is a prose poem, a self-conscious work of art more successful in achieving...