Rena is a mixed-race woman living post-Civil War America. She decides to join her brother, John, who has become a successful lawyer by lying about his heritage. He has suffered the loss of his wife and so Rena agrees to help him raise his son, Albert. Rena leaves his mother to live with John, and Frank Fowler regrets her departure, having been in love with her. Together, John and Rena go to South Carolina, agreeing not to tell anyone that their mother is Black.
They attend a festival where men are jousting in a tournament. Rena encounters a powerful local named George who asks her to the ball. While on their date, he falls in love with her and asks for her to marry him, and she agrees. In private she panics about the day when he might discover her mixed heritage. George and John go on a business trip together, and Rena has telling dreams in their absence. She dreams that her mother is sick and dying.
When she awakes, she finds that the dreams were correct. She decides to leave to see her mother in case she dies. George arrives to find that his next order of business is in the same town where Rena is visiting her mother. She doesn't know he is there until they almost run into each other, and after several chance encounters, he finds her there. George learns that she is half-Black.
From afar, George writes to John that he will not marry Rena because of her race, but he agrees to keep the secret so that they can go on living normal lives. Rena decides to stay behind with her mother and accepts a job teaching at a school for Black kids. The man who gave her the job is Jeff Wain, a widower. In time she learns he was not bewidowed but beat his wife and was left by her. She sees George coming into town one day and has a panic attack. When she comes to, she is ill, and over the next days, she dies. When she dies, George arrives to proclaim his love for her, but of course it is too late.
