Gabrielle comes from a small village in the South of France at a time when her dream of true love is considered scandalous--even a sign of insanity. Her parents marry her to José, an honest, loving Spanish farm worker whom they think will make a respectable woman of her. Despite José's devotion to her, she vows that she will never love him and lives like a prisoner bound by the constraints of conventional post-World War II society until the day she is sent away to the Alps to heal her kidney stones. There she meets André Sauvage, a dashing injured veteran of the Indo-Chinese War who rekindles her long-buried passions. She promises that they will run away together, and he seems to share her desire. Will anyone dare rob her of her right to follow her dreams?