Published in 1925, Jouve's first novel strikingly prefigures the French new wave in fiction. Paulina, said to be the most beautiful woman in Milan, enters a passionate affair with a married man. Her love is all-consuming, yet she is plagued by its impurity in the eyes of her family, of society, of God. The death of her father, and the subsequent death of her lover's wife, send Paulina into an abyss from which neither her love nor faith can rescue her.