The Crime of Henry Vane: A Study with a Moral

Excerpt: In April 1873 Henry Vane was sitting on the perron of a small summer house in Brittany poking the pebbles in the driveway with his cane. He had been there for half an hour and there was nothing in his appearance and attitude to indicate that he would not be there for half an hour more. There was one red pebble in particular which he had an especial desire to prod out from among the others which were gray. But it was round and slippery and slid about the ferruled end of his cane. After poking it some time he desisted and held the cane in his hands in front of his knees which as the next step of the porch was not much lower were as high as his chin. “C’en est fait de moi” he muttered Henry Vane though a New Yorker had been brought up in France and in the French language his thoughts came most readily. He had just seen for the last time an old friend of his—a girl whom he had known in infancy in childhood in maidenhood; and whom it seemed incredible impossible intolerable that he should know no more. It was upon the piazza of her uncle’s house that he was sitting; and she was to leave the next day for Switzerland. He was of age that day and was “his own man now.” “And hers” he thought bitterly. She did not love him however; and at his request had just told him so.