In which the gentle schoolmaster Phillotson faces the bitterness of public censure and personal sorrow when his wife departs under circumstances that confound the town’s strict moral judgment, yet he steadfastly honours her choice with an uneasy kindness that isolates him. His visit from her, brief and tender yet fraught with unspoken grief, leaves both entangled in a web of duty and disillusionment, while the quiet town of Shaston turns against him, save for a ragged band of unlikely defenders.