Henri, a young doctor, summoned one night to a little girl's sick-bed, befirends her mother Helene, a widow; the growth of love between them and Helene's vain struggles to resist it, are powerfully and movingly drawn. The force which finally defeats passion is neither convention nor conscience, nor sympathy for Henri's frivolous but warm-hearted wife: it is the frantic possessive love of the child Jeanne, a delicate and neurotic creature who fights to separate the lovers with all the weapons in her power, and succeeds at the cost of her life.