It is turn-of-the-century Vienna, the wee hours of a wet night. A man alights from a horse-drawn carriage and jokes with companions about the duel at dawn to which he has been challenged. Entering his flat alone he tells his manservant he will leave before morning, "Honor is a luxury only gentlemen can afford." But the mute servant indicates a letter awaiting him and, as he prepares for his departure, the man opens it and begins to read...
"By the time you read this letter, I may be dead," it says, and the voice of a woman, the letter writer, begins to narrate her story. Her tale unfolds in flashback as the man immerses himself in the letter.
