From eccentric Joanna's boarding house, predatory Baba roams Dublin looking for men to give her a good time - and dragging with her a reluctant Cait, worrying about her figure and wanting to talk about books. Then she meets dark, long-faced Eugene Gaillard, a film director, and for a while Cait's romantic dreams seem to be fulfilled. But Eugene Gaillard is a Protestant divorce, and when Cait's drunkard father gets to hear of it, he summons a lynch mob.