Nessa O'Grady, only daughter of an old, landowning Catholic family, is set to marry her childhood sweetheart when her father commits suicide; the wedding is off and the family thrown into turmoil. Seeing that her native land holds no future for her, Nessa accepts a proposal from Thomas Cooper, a wealthy adventurer from the Congo Free State, and travels with him to Africa. There she finds her new husband is a brute - not only to her, but to the Congolese and, sickened, she flees under the protection of black American journalist David Addison. As he is married, she returns, pregnant, to her native Ireland, divorces Cooper and decides to go to America, where she feels her half-caste daughter will have a better life. We last see them as they are about to board the Titanic...