Lord Golden wishes a portrait of his wife by the eminent artist. He introduces the young artist to his wife and discovers that they had known each other before. As the picture progresses the young people feel their love revive. They part in honor and dignity, but their hearts again relive the past when they shared their crusts in bohemia and plighted vows that were to be broken by ambition plus jealousy. So she passed from his life to become a great lady, while he gave himself over to ambition and became a great painter, but: "Each life'3 unfulfilled, you see; / It hangs still patchy and scrappy. / We have not sighed deep, laughed free. / Starved. Feasted. Despaired. Been happy. / This could but have happened once / And we missed it, lost it forever." Robert Browning.
—Moving Picture World synopsis