Summary
In a clapboard hamlet where the air itself seems pickled in ancestral disapproval, Liz—lank-haired, sharp-elbowed, forever skirting the gutter—drifts like a smudge on a daguerreotype beside her sodden sire, the pair treated as moral offal by youths whose piety is measured in frost-bitten stares. Salvation, or its counterfeit, arrives on iron wheels: Henry Penfield, fresh-minted preacher with a gaze too tender for scripture, and Arnold Brice, bohemian brush-wielder, carnal promise bundled in a velvet collar. The town’s crystalline darling, Mildred Holcombe—deacon’s daughter, hymnal muse—becomes the canvas upon which Arnold paints illicit desire, while Liz, hungry for any scrap of belonging, watches from the periphery. Brother Arthur, a scourge in starched wool, vows blood-oath retribution, yet Mildred slips her gilded cage, stealing through moon-bled lanes to the artist’s garret where turpentine and yearling passion hang thick. Liz, spying Arthur’s stalking silhouette, sprints through the night, heart hammering a funeral march, and breaches the studio candlelight to fling herself upon the grenade of rumor: she claims Arnold’s disgrace as her own, swallowing the town’s censure like ground glass. The deacons, those black-suited arbiters of oxygen, exile her; Henry, eavesdropping on a tear-bright farewell, unearths the cruciform truth. Come Sabbath, he ascends the pulpit not to preach hellfire but to immolate his own career, declaring before gasping congregants that he will follow the ostracized girl—because grace, he now knows, wears a hem of scandal.
Liz and her alcoholic father are rejected by the young people in the staid little New England village where they live. One day, Henry Penfield, the new minister, comes to town and is attracted to Liz. On the same train as Henry is Arnold Brice, a young artist who takes a fancy to Mildred Holcombe, the prettiest girl in town and the daughter of a deacon of the church. Mildred falls in love with Arnold, but her brother Arthur threatens to kill the artist if he finds them together. Ignoring Arthur's threats, Mildred goes to the artist's studio. Liz discovers that Arthur has followed her and runs to the studio to warn them. When Arthur arrives, Liz sacrifices her honor to save Mildred and confesses that she was having an affair with Arnold. The deacons then decide to send Liz away because of her disgrace, and Henry, overhearing Liz bid goodbye to Mildred, discovers the truth. That Sunday, he tenders his resignation and announces that he is going to marry Liz.
