 Andrew Crocker-Harris, a stuffy professor of Classical Greek at an English public school is disliked by his students, being cuckolded by a colleague and denied a deserved pension by the penurious headmaster. Although he began his career eighteen years earlier as a brilliant young scholar, he has withdrawn into the stiff rigidity of school rules and regimentation and has distanced himself from all human emotion. While facing a bleak financial future and a disintegrating marriage, the kindness of one of his students rekindles his humanity.