Oskar and Mona meet when they come to the Academy of Music to see if they have been accepted, he as a piano student, she a singing student. They become a couple and married but soon there are the frictions. Mona gets hundred crowns from her father, because he thinks she has become so charmless. For it, she buys a perfume called Three Wishes.

Professor Barring is awarded the Nobel Prize in physics. According to Barring the scientist's sole duty is to seek the truth, even if this leads to the "gates of hell".