Since her husband pronounced her frigid on her wedding night, Antonia De Angelis has been an invalid. When he disappears, she believes him dead: she leaves her sickbed and takes over his business, traveling to see clients. She discovers her husband's passions, his political writing, mistresses, and his indifference to the peasants on her family's land. The husband is forced to watch from a distance as his wife blossom socially in his absence; then the plot thickens.