While traveling by train in New Mexico, novelist Richard Harland meets Ellen Berent, a beautiful socialite from Boston.
She is particularly drawn to him, as he reminds her of her deceased father, to whom she had an obsessive attachment.
Ellen is visiting New Mexico to spread her father's ashes, accompanied by her aloof mother and her cousin Ruth, who was adopted by Mrs. Berent (Richard is surprised when Ruth tells him this, and wonders why she did not say "Mr. and Mrs. Berent" adopted her).