Writer Robert Sterling is visiting a café, when suddenly a scandal becomes known. To keep the others from overreacting, Sterling tells them about something similar that he saw happen years ago. He had been in Monte Carlo, and was playing host to a young widow whom he knew well. When he persuaded her to visit the casino one night, she became irresistibly attracted to a desperate young man who became suicidal after losing all his money at roulette. Sterling describes how they fell deeply in love, and how both of them then had to face difficult decisions about the future.