The rejection of a man's unrequited love for a woman residing in Montreal, Canada drives him into a catatonic state from which he recovers but without any memory of her. This arouses her love previously suppressed by fear of commitment and familial influence. In an effort to regain his love, she follows him to Paris, France where he is engaged in a counterintelligence mission with the CIA, but she succeeds only in obtaining a promise from him to call her when he returns to the United States. However, upon his return and visit, he learns that, due to her family attachments and business, she cannot leave the city of her birth to join and marry him in the United States, therefore he accepts an invitation from a Jesuit missionary friend appointed as rector of a monastery in China to join him where he remains for more than two and a half years. Upon his return to the United States with newfound wisdom, he is invited by his cousin to attend his aunt's funeral in Montreal, where he unintentionally meets her at a musical play in the Place des Arts and learns the reasons for her rejection have since evaporated and she is now receptive to his previous proposal of marriage, which he must weigh with the wisdom he gained in a spiritual event at the monastery.