Ruth Puttermesser is a lawyer living in modern day NYC. However, she has taken a year off work to live on her savings and contemplate her fate. She comes to the conclusion that she must marry. She has never been married, though she had a lover once. A delivery guy drops pizza off at her apartment—3-C—that was supposed to go to a Morgenbluth in apartment 6-C.

Ruth thinks about how she longs for "marriage of true minds.... a wedding of like souls." Just the other day, she read a biography of the 19th century George Eliot from the library. George Eliot had a long and happy love affair with the writer George Lewis, living together and reading to one another nightly, though they were shunned from society because George Lewes had been married and divorce was not legal. Ruth romanticizes their intellectual relationship and wants to find a partnership like that.

Ruth takes the pizza to the sixth floor and finds a party in progress. There are children running around. She leaves the pizza on a piano. A divorcee tries to flirt with her but she isn't interested. Then, as she's leaving, she sees a "Victorian gentleman" whom she is captivated by—though he's maybe two decades younger than her.

The next day she goes to the Met and runs into the same 30-something-year-old man painting. She refers to him as a copyist because he copies famous artworks. He argues that it isn't copying—that everything he does is new, happening for the first time. Ruth invites him to her apartment for tea and, over time, the two become close. His name is Rupert. They read to one another from the biographies and letters of George Eliot and George Lewes, her introducing him to her new obsession with their lives and their romance. She hopes that Rupert will be her George Lewes. One day Rupert suggests they get married. They continue reading about Eliot's life. Ruth tries to close the book as soon as Lewes dies but Rupert insists they read on.

As they continue to read, Rupert fixates on a different character in Eliot's life: Johnny Cross, a young man whom Eliot married shortly after Lewes's death. Rupert theorizes that Johnny Cross, rather than actually being in love with Eliot, is a copyist aspiring to become George Lewes. Rupert insists they read about the honeymoon, even though Ruth doesn't want to.

On the honeymoon, George Eliot and Johnny Cross have still not had sex. She goes into the bathroom of the hotel room to prepare, but when she comes out she finds his body cold and his eyes rolled back. A moment later, his eyes are normal—but then he jumps out the window into the Grand Canal.

Ruth and Rupert get married in front of two witnesses on a Monday afternoon. However, that night, Rupert packs his stuff to leave. He says he can't stay. He runs toward the window with his art easel, stops, and opens the window. The wet snow falls into the room. He picks up his things and walks out the door. She stares after him, thinking it's "pointless to call after him as George Eliot called down into the Grand Canal"; thinking, "A copyist, a copyist!"