Set in Hampstead the story concerns Nell, daughter of a country parson who has lost his faith; her life with a group of unconventional young people working and loving in London; her shy, rather cross love for her cousin John, a boy younger than herself who exerts a strange power over her. We meet also a poet, who is rescued from the tyranny of one charmer only to fall beneath the still more dangerous spell of another; some of those concerned solve their problems; others have gone too far to "come right in the end."