Young Harry is in love and wants to marry an actress, much to the displeasure of his family. Harry thinks that Bishop Armstrong knows nothing about love, so Armstrong tells him the story of Rita and himself. Rita was an opera star singing in New York, who was at a party given by Cornelius. Armstrong was a 28-year-old rector. He fell for Rita when he saw her and after six weeks he wanted to marry her. Naive as he was, he thought that all of Rita's "relationships" were in the distant past, but Rita lives for the moment and knows that she can never marry Armstrong.