Odette d'Antrevernes, a sheltered and enthusiastic young girl, lives with her widowed mother, her Creole nurse and their aged butler in an old grey chateau by the Loire. She receives regular visits from the old CurE of Bois-Fleuri, who tells her thrilling stories of Bernadette and her vision of the Holy Virgin in the mountains. One day Odette decides that she too must seek the Holy Virgin. With the house deadly quiet in the middle of the night, she steals secretly out into the garden, but events do not run as she expects. By morning, what has happened there will have changed her life...