An aspiring composer, in the British Air Force for WWII, is downed in Italy and rescued by an Italian girl. He returns home to his wife, inspired to write an opera and aware that he's fallen in love with his rescuer.

Jonathan Dakers' early ambition was to become a great surgeon and to marry Edie Martyn. But, on the death of his father, he is obliged to start work as a partner in a poor general practice in the Black Country. Edie falls in love with Jonathan's brother, Harold, who is killed in the Great War, and Jonathan marries her as planned. It is only afterwards that he realises he now loves another.

Handsome Italian laborer Kieron Moore works as caretaker of the Neopolitan villa inherited by plain-Jane Englishwomen Margaret Johnston and Dulcie Gray. Johnston is swept off her feet by the raffishly charming Moore, and before long they are wed.