The Duke Marco visits to his country side estate after many years absence. His farmers wants him to stay and run the place while his lover wants him to sell it. All while a farmers daughter also enters his life.
Nadia, a young Soviet journalist who is passing through Pompeii, discovers the power that comes from the Catholic faith when the painter she loves, Paolo, and who saved her from drowning during the shipwreck of the cruise in which they met, is at the gates of death because of a serious illness whose symptoms are similar to those of leprosy.
While her new husband is away looking for work, the wife loses the child she was expecting and uses another woman's baby as a substitute so she won't have to upset her spouse when he returns.
