The sensual, aging artist Modest, seeking to test the strength of his feelings, kills Natalya Polonskaya’s husband; the young revolutionary and Natalya’s lover takes his own life; Natalya herself, along with her sister, who is also her lover, flees to Italy…

Zhamin, a member of a geological expedition and a former criminal, receives a strange letter, after which he quits his job and hurries through the taiga to a nearby station. In the city it is necessary to leave and his main enemy Legostaev, whom Zhamin has long threatened to kill. Zhamin comes to the station alone. He‘s found to have a bloody knife and a large sum of money with him.