Berta was always romantic, and her whole life she dreamed of great love. The truth is that both men she once gave her heart to were, for the most part, a product of her imagination. Craddock, the farmer who managed to rise to become a wealthy gentleman, was a kind but somewhat rough and down-to-earth man—incapable of appreciating the depth and strength of his wife’s personality. And young Gerald, on the other hand, is wicked and angry at the whole world, a cynical boy in whom all the disappointment of the “golden youth” seems concentrated. So can Mrs. Craddock find with someone any of that desired happiness?