Victoria Flower, motherless and nearing womanhood, is beginning to chafe against the restrictions of her life as the vicar's only daughter in a remote Cornish mining town. Her honourable and well-meaning father, though disillusioned by the impossibility of his spiritual task, thinks he has found a suitable companion for her when he introduces a gentle, musical young curate into the parish. Indeed a friendship blossoms, as Victoria finds a fellow-sufferer...