Leslie Adams curses at his face in the glass after cutting himself while shaving his chin. At any moment, he expects the clock to strike eight and mark the dinner hour and he thinks about the stick of alum that his wife, Lucy, brought for emergencies and he remembers the pain it caused. His only guests tonight are Marjorie and Jordan but he doesn’t want to endure pain just so they don’t have to wait for their food. 

He holds the towel to his cheek and wanders over to his bedroom window and looks down at the lawn where the electrician’s Ford coupe is parked. Since moving into the country house six months ago, they’d had a lot of electric trouble. He recalls there’s something he needs to talk to the electrician about but can’t remember what exactly. The cut stops bleeding and he admires the flames in the fireplace and although it’s a bit too warm outside for fires Lucy does not object. She accepts some of his more eccentric ways and, in thinking of her, he feels a twinge he hasn’t felt since the letter with the Chinese postmark arrived in their mailbox a few weeks ago. He had known for many years that Jordan meant nothing to her anymore and that he can’t affect their marriage, but still Leslie invites Jordan down for the weekend against Lucy’s wishes to prove the man has no effect on him.

The clock strikes eight and he hastens to pull himself together and listens to Jordan talking to Lucy from the top of the staircase. He wonders if Lucy is comparing Jordan’s lack of charm and wit to his comparative abundance. He starts to descend the stairs but changes his mind and takes the corridor to the right instead of the left and walks down the servants’ staircase and he walks through the pantry while the electrician takes off in his Ford. Suddenly, he remembers he wanted to tell the professional about the two loose wires he’d noticed in the cloakroom that had shocked him. The electrician had been around twice since he’d been electrocuted, but every time he’d forgotten to mention it. He resolves to remember next time and walks into the hall where he finds Lucy and Jordan in front of the fireplace. Lucy sits snug in her favorite armchair and Jordan squats on a footstool before the flames. 

His entrance startles Lucy and when he kisses her forehead she stiffens. Leslie tells them about the wires and Jordan, an amateur electrician, asks to see them, which Leslie quickly refuses. Lucy remarks that it’s hot inside with the fire and Leslie teases her and insists it’s never too hot for a fire. He tells Jordan that he and Lucy were in Canada last year and they ran into a big forest fire that they enjoyed watching. When Jordan says it must have caused a lot of damage, Leslie laughs at him for caring about the money. 

Lucy greets Marjorie at the door and Leslie lights a cigarette and looms over Jordan who mixes her a drink he learned how to make in Shanghai. Leslie praises his drink enthusiastically but when he puts his drink down only a third has been drunk and Marjorie gives him a knowing smile. During dinner, he attempts to stress his sincere feelings towards Jordan and asks him questions about China which Jordan answers politely and in a nonexpansive way. Leslie is annoyed that Jordan seems to capture the attention of both women who find Leslie’s stories boring. 

After dinner, Jordan and Marjorie play Leslie and Lucy in bridge and the latter team wins. Even though he lost, the women both complement Jordan on his play which vexes Leslie. The party ends at 11 p.m. and Marjorie leaves worried about an incoming storm. Leslie asks Jordan if he thinks Lucy is handsome and Jordan says she is. Leslie encourages the guest to find a wife for himself, but Jordan avoids the implied accusation that he’s interested in Lucy and says he’s not looking for a wife, which makes Leslie angry. As Jordan leaves to sleep in the guest bedroom, he says he left several reels of film he took in Mongolia in the cloakroom if he’d like to see and Leslie feigns enthusiasm.

In the night, he thinks he hears a creak of someone walking down the corridor and he thinks about going to Lucy’s room, but he resists, knowing that Lucy would think he didn’t trust her not to go into the guest bedroom. At half-past one, the storm begins and he goes downstairs to close a window and on the way up puts his ear to Lucy’s keyhole and is happy to hear her rhythmic breathing. He tells himself he’s just pleased she wasn’t disturbed by the storm. He is awoken by someone screaming his name and the smell of something burning. Leslie flings himself out of bed and finds Lucy in the smoky corridor in her nightgown, and he wonders if it was the dangling wires and the stored films that started it. 

Lucy runs to the nursery and wakes up their two children and he proceeds down the corridor to wake up the nurse and the maids. Then, he calls the fire department and uses his extinguisher in the corridor. Suddenly, he remembers that Jordan is still asleep on the other side of the corridor and makes his way to the door which he finds is locked. He bangs on the door but hears no response and begins to grow very faint from inhaling smoke. He thinks Jordan must have awoken and jumped out the window and retreats down the staircase and runs out of the building. He runs into Lucy who asks where Jordan is and then runs in the direction of the approaching fire bells. At this moment, he knows that it is Jordan who she loves, not him. 

Leslie looks at the beautiful sight of the house being engulfed in flames and he watches on in fascinated horror. He realizes that this is what he’d unconsciously wanted all along and in thinking this he’d made it happen. He covers his eyes with his hands and tries to blind himself from the consequences of his ill will towards the man.