Popular 1925 novel about an unloving marriage at a flash point and a selfish adulteress who travels a turbulent path to redemption, the second film version of a fraught romantic triangle in 1949 Hong Kong. When her affair with a married man is discovered by her bacteriologist husband, an aimless American socialite is issued an ultimatum: join her spouse in a remote Chinese village where he'll help combat a brutal cholera epidemic or face a humiliatingly public divorce that will ruin their lives.