The young post mistress Maria lives with her husband and daughter in Conamara, located on the Atlantic coast in a wild part of Ireland. When Axel, a lank German with whom she had an affair several years before, turns up at her house as if from nowhere, she is seized by panic: her husband naturally knows nothing of her affair and, at the time, she did not tell Axel that she was married with a child. Now her former lover has appeared on her doorstep and is even considering settling in Conamara. Maria tries doggedly to ward off this unwelcome visitor, but Axel is eloquent, amiable and enterprising and decides to start up a business with her and her husband. It becomes clear that he has burnt all his bridges and that he still adores his former love. To succumb to his seduction, however, would mean risking the most valuable thing in Maria’s life – her contented and tranquil family. . . . This civil, unimpassioned story of temptation, punishment and enduring hope is excellently directed and casted and draws to an almost unexpectedly optimistic conclusion.