The story begins when beautiful Nina loses a bracelet during a masked ball. Another woman finds it and without revealing who she is, gives it to an ardent cavalry officer at the ball. This officer had earlier spent the evening learning how to gamble from Nina's husband Arbenin. When the young officer shows the bracelet to Arbenin, he starts to suspect that he has been betrayed by his wife. The film depicts the effects of Arbenin's jealousy on everyone around the couple, leading to a quarrel with and calculated humiliation of the officer, Arbenin poisoning his wife, and finishing with a strange out of left field "I told you so" from someone who Arbenin had injured a decade earlier.