Seven years of married life and sixteen years of working for the same newspaper leave Erik Dorn feeling empty, bored, and segregated from life. An extramarital love affair offers only temporary satisfaction -- it is the European turmoil of World War I which provides an opportunity to abandoning his banal Chicago existence and becoming a participant rather than an observer in life. Upon returning to Chicago Dorn finds his wife re-married and his love for the other woman dead. Only emptiness remains.
