Set amid the political strife following World War I, this involved and sometimes tedious saga centers on Lily Cardew, a rather stupidly romantic young woman rebelling against the strictures of her life as the granddaughter of an autocratic and conservative steel magnate. Home from war service, where for the first time she had mixed with the middle class -- notably a lame young man working for the Red Cross -- Lily longs for freedom. As Bolsheviks, strikers and anarchists vie with the elite, Lily becomes attracted to a disreputable revolutionary.