Robert Langley (Marius Goring), successful and recently widowed, returns from a memorial service held for his wife. He finds a woman waiting for him at home. He recognises her as Jane Bridges (Elizabeth Sellars), the woman with whom he had been in love twenty years before. Jane tells him she has returned on a sentimental journey from America, where she was recently bereaved. Her husband has left her well-to-do and independent. She invites Robert to dinner, preparing to act out the lie she has begun. She has never been married, and she is not wealthy.