The opening scene shows a soldier holding a string of pearls with a cross in the center. As he kisses the cross the words of the song appear on the screen: "The hours I spent with thee, dear heart, Are as a string of pearls to me; I count them over, every one apart, My rosary, my rosary." The soldier is seen bidding good-bye to his sweetheart. For the last time they embrace. The girl's mother weeps as she sees the stalwart youth leaving for the front. As the young officer mounts his horse and rides away the girl falls in a faint to the ground. Again the words of the song appear among the leaves of the trees above her: "Each hour a pearl, each pearl a prayer, To still a heart in absence wrung, I tell each bead unto the end, And there a cross is hung." The months pass. The soldier is seen now at the campfire and now in battle. Always here appears before him the face of the girl he loves. And then one day he is wounded and taken to the hospital. The girl hears that he has been killed, and grief-stricken, she enters the convent. But her soldier sweetheart finally recovers after long months of fever and delirium. And when the war ends he returns, to find that the one he loved best has taken irrevocable religious vows.