Money has an "untoward influence" on the lives of Ralph and Laura Whittenmore, a young New York couple: "They were always at the threshold of fortune; they always seemed to have something on the fire."

Laura moved to New York from Wisconsin, and her future husband made a contemporaneous pilgrimage to the city from Illinois. They met two years after their separate arrivals, when Ralph glimpsed Laura in the lobby of an office building and became "enraptured." Making up an excuse to talk to her, he pretended to mistake her for someone from his past, and then asked to take her out for drinks. She agreed, and they wed three months later. They began they married lives modestly, though they always felt like they were about to break into the middle class: Ralph kept lining up an impressive job that invariably fell through, and then promptly finding another promising prospect.

Continuing this string of promise and disappointment, Ralph receives an offer to run a department at an overhauled firm. The new owners promise to formalize the arrangement in a month or two, but shake his hand over drinks. Thrilled by their fortune, the couple celebrates with an expensive dinner, moves into a larger apartment, buys a car, and decides to have a child.

Laura becomes pregnant and resigns from her job, while Ralph's promised employment continues to suffer "delays and postponements." Eventually, the couple comes to need new clothes, and Ralph suggests breaking into their nest egg while they wait for his new source of income to kick in. His wife objects, and they fall into a heated argument. Ralph thinks about "all the other girls he could have married," and reflects that "all his desires seemed to lie outside the small apartment Laura had arranged."

The pair quietly reconciles when Ralph learns that the job he was promised went to another. Soon following this devastation, Laura gives birth to their daughter. Taking the child to the park every day, Laura makes the acquaintance of Alice Holinshed, who has an air of glamour and wealth.

Meanwhile, Ralph has a new idea for a business venture — a Venetian blind treated with a soundproof paint to block out the noise of the city. He loses nearly all the family's savings on this failed entrepreneurial endeavor, leaving them "poorer than ever."

Ralph goes off to serve in WWII, leaving Laura to work, raise their child, and replenish their savings herself. When Ralph returns home two years later, they pick up their "old habits" and remain poor. Laura again quits her job and resumes spending her days in the park with Alice, who now appears quite poor despite her tall tales.

Ralph soon glimpses another chance at prosperity when his uncle connects him with Paul Hadaam, a millionaire businessman looking to establish a synthetic wool factory on the West coast. Ralph's uncle saved Hadaam's life when his boat sank in Lake Erie, and — as repayment — Hadaam pledges to give Ralph a job. Hadaam specifically offers a 15,000 salary — enough to give Ralph and Laura a comfortable life in California.

Hadaam offers Ralph time to think the move over, and promises to call and confirm a few days later. Since so many opportunities have eluded Ralph's grasp, he tries to prepare himself for this new prospect to fall through. And yet his nature won't allow it: "years of resolute self-denial, instead of rewarding him with reserves of fortitude, had left him more than ordinarily susceptible to temptation."

During this tense waiting period, the anxious couple attends a party, where Laura runs into Alice. Alice has somehow heard that the couple expect to move to California to chase a sizable salary, and fumes over her own poverty and perpetual disappointment. "What's so wonderful bout you that you get a break like this?" she asks Laura. "I swear to Jesus I'd murder somebody if I thought it would bring us into any more."

Laura reflects that "the hunt, the search for money the thad seemed to her natural, amiable, and fair when they first committed themselves to it, now seemed like a hazardous and piratical voyage." She asks Ralph to go home.

The next day is that on which Hadaam promised to call. Eventually, Ralph tires of waiting and resorts to dialing Hadaam himself. The millionaire's secretary picks up and informs Ralph that her boss had a stroke and will not recover. "I imagine he made you some kind of promise, but I'm afraid he won't be able to keep it," she says.

Laura comforts her bitterly disappointed husband, and he is suddenly struck by desire for her. "Here it was, here it all was, and the shine of the gold seemed to him then to be all around her arms," Ralph reflects.