Finishing The King in Yellow: The Mask

Jumping across the pond, this story takes place in Paris, France. Alec, the protagonist is in love with Genevieve who is engaged to painter Boris. Boris claims he has discovered a crystalline solution that turns living things into marble. The opening interested me the most. Boris demonstrates the solution to Alec and claims that it will never find its way out of his home for fears of what it would do to the world of sculpting. Doris also shows a large vat of the solution and from that point, any reader could tell where the story was going to go. Genevieve falls in and Boris kills himself in grief. In a creepy twist, Alec keeps the statue for several years. Of course Genevieve returns to life and of course they live happily ever after. The story brushes Boris aside as almost a "too bad" kind of phrase. One interpretation I've read is that the mask is represented by Alec's hidden love, a type of mask he uses to hide his true feelings. This story is more reflective of Chamber's later romantic and tragic works to the point it almost doesn't fit in the rest of the book. There's little tension and any fear I had anticipated was snuffed out. Besides the solution, there's nothing mystical in the story and barely any allusion to the titular King. 

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