Mystery novelist Janet Frobisher, lives in an isolated house, having been separated for years from her criminal husband. She has fallen in love with her secretary's fiancé and when her estranged husband unexpectedly returns, Janet poisons him, but just as she's about to dispose of the body, one of her husband's criminal cohorts also shows up.
In Vermont, college student Ives Towner refuses to marry his longtime girlfriend, Julie Weir, until he has a career. Soon after, Julie meets and grows infatuated with handsome writer Michael Shaw, and they marry and move to Paris. Years later, after Michael's accidental death, Julie and her daughter move back to Vermont to live with her aunt and Julie finds Ives, now a professor, disinterested in resuming their romantic relationship.
