The play begins when beautiful Nina (Makarova) loses a bracelet during a masked ball. Another woman finds it and without revealing who she is gives it to an ardent Calvary officer admirer at the ball. This officer had earlier spend the evening learning how to gamble from Nina's husband Arbenin (Mordvinov). When the young officer shows the bracelet to Arbenin, the husband starts to suspect that he has been betrayed by his wife, Nina. The film depicts the effects of Arbenin's jealousy on everyone around the couple, leading to a quarrel with and calculated humiliation of the officer, Arbenin poisoning his wife, and finishes with a strange out of left field "I told you so" from someone who Arbenin had injured a decade earlier.