Barbara is married to Georg Bertram, a professor of medicine who once saved her father's life. Things go awry for the couple when she gives birth to a mentally defective child. For Georg, coldly clinical, euthanizing the infant is the only way out. He is about to commit the irreparable when Barbara manages to interrupt his fatal act. By mutual agreement, husband and wife decide that Barbara will go to Saint-Guénolé in Brittany, where she and their son will be cared for by Louise Kerbrec, Georg's former nurse, in the hypothetical hope that the boy's condition will improve.