Plot summary

The teenage girl, Ewa is first seen confessing and warned about having any impure thoughts or feelings. Her family has boarders and one day a young man, Lukasz moves in and they fall in love. He is trying to get a divorce but is denied by local church people. They live together after he is wounded in a duel, and then he takes off for Rome to get a divorce. She has a child and drowns it. She hears that he has been imprisoned in Rome so she goes there only to find out that he has been released. In her wanderings through France and Germany she finds out that her lover has married a rich woman and gone back to Poland. She gets involved with two con men who use her to trap Lukasz. They make her invite Lukasz so that they can rob him. When they are making love, she tries to kill Lukasz by injecting drug but he does not die. She runs off and sinks into prostitution back in the old country. She is helped by an utopian rich man but the con men reappear, trying to use her as a lead to Lukasz. She tries to warn him and is killed.