Andrew Crocker-Harris has been forced from his setting as the classics master at an English public school as a result of bad health. As he winds up his final term, he discovers not only that his spouse, Millie, has betrayed to him with one of his fellow schoolmasters, however that the school's pupils as well as professors have long disdained him. Nevertheless, an unanticipated act of compassion creates Crocker-Harris to re-evaluate his life's work.