During the World War I, Lieutenant Richard Saville, a young Royal Navy officer on five days leave, and Miss Lucinda Bentley, a merchant's daughter from Portsmouth, get talking on the train up to London. Halfway along their journey, they miss their rail connection and spend a romantic holiday in the countryside of southern England. When Saville proposes to her, she accepts, but on the day they are due to go back to Portsmouth, she changes her mind, asking Saville to realise that neither he nor she could bear being parted for the long periods he would be at sea. They part, seemingly forever.