Escaping a dreary clerkship in industrial Yorkshire by taking a job as a teacher in Belgium, the hero gets entangled with the sensuous but manipulative Zoraide Reuter, which complicates his affections for a penniless girl who is both teacher and pupil in Reuter's school.

Escaping a dreary clerkship in industrial Yorkshire by taking a job as a teacher in Belgium, the hero gets entangled with the sensuous but manipulative Zoraide Reuter, which complicates his affections for a penniless girl who is both teacher and pupil in Reuter's school.