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Plot
New York novelist Tony Barrett (Gary Cooper) and his wife Dora (Helen Vinson) have accumulated serious debts as a result of their fast and affluent lifestyle in the big city. When Tony approaches his publisher expecting an advance on his newest novel, he is told that success has gone to his head and the novel is unpublishable. With few options available, Tony and Dora move to his family's run-down farm in Connecticut, where they meet his neighbors: a Polish farmer, Jan Novak (Sig Ruman), and his beautiful daughter, Manya (Anna Sten). Looking to expand his own property, Mr. Novak offers Tony $5,000 for a field bordering the Novak farm, and the author eagerly accepts. With their finances replenished, Dora returns to New York, leaving Tony at the farm, where he intends to write a new novel inspired by the Novaks and their friends.
Sometime later, Tony and Manya are at his house discussing her betrothal to Fredrik (Ralph Bellamy), the young man chosen by her father to be her husband. A drunken Tony tells Manya that she is not in love with the young man, and makes suggestive remarks that anger her. The following day, Tony apologizes to Manya and the two begin a close friendship. After Tony's servant leaves to return to New York, Manya begins spending more time at Tony's farm and the two fall in love, just like the characters in his new novel, Stephen and Sonya. Fredrik soon learns that Manya has been seeing Tony at his farm, and he and her father forbid her from seeing Tony again. Ignoring their orders, Manya continues to spend time with the novelist at his house. One evening, a snow storm prevents Manya from returning home. The next morning, Mr. Novak angrily confronts Tony at his farm. Later, he demands that Manya marry Fredrik the following Monday. When Manya tells him that she will not spend her life being an unpaid servant like her mother, Novak slaps her.
Later that day, Dora arrives back at the farm, telling her husband that she missed him terribly during their separation. Dora hears stories about the previous night, and hopes that they mean nothing. When she reads his new manuscript, however, she suspects that the love affair between the characters of Stephen and Sonya reflect her husband's own feelings for Manya. On the night before her wedding, Manya goes to see Tony, but finds Dora instead. The two speak about Tony's new novel and how it will end—both realizing that they are really speaking about their own lives. Dora tells Manya that she is sure that Stephen's wife will not give up her husband, but that she would feel sorry for Sonya. Manya tells her about the upcoming wedding, and then leaves.
When Tony returns home, he asks Dora for a divorce, but she refuses, telling him that his novel should end with Sonya marrying her Polish fiancé. The next day, after learning that Manya and Fredrik are getting married, Tony goes to the wedding party and dances with Manya. Later, a drunken Fredrik, angered by his fiancé's lack of passion and interest on their wedding night, storms out of their bedroom and goes to Tony's house to confront the man he suspects is to blame. Manya follows him to Tony's house, where she attempts to stop Fredrik from fighting with Tony on the stairs. During the struggle, Manya falls down the stairs and is seriously injured. Tony carries her to the parlor, where he tells her he loves her, just before she dies. Later, Dora tells Tony that he can now see Manya privately. Gazing out the window, Tony tells her about how full of life Manya was and imagines that she is waving to him.
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