In suburban Victorian London, Marion Franks, the lonely daughter of uncaring parents, knows little of life and love. When love, in the form of actor Hallam Beck, does suddenly possess her, she is overwhelmed by an obsessive desire which leads her into an alien world far removed from her upper middle-class upbringing. Hallam becomes the nemesis of the Franks family, and his self-torment results in his mind finally failing and his life being suspended in the past.