While seated one evening in a wine-bar that bohemian artists frequent successful writer Jan Herold makes the acquaintance of a young, beginning painter, Jarmila Bendová. Jarmila has a financial and artistic crisis because she has lost the model for her last painting, without which she is unable to bring off her exhibition, and without selling her paintings at the exhibition she will not be able to pay her debt to her landlord. Herold comes to know of her problems and because he has fallen in love with the girl he tries to give her all possible help. As an old man he models for her so she will be able to finish her painting, as a fortune-teller he frightens the landlord so he will not clamour for the rent from her, and he arranges an exhibition for her at his new publisher's in a prestigious gallery. Jarmila eventually sees through his disguises, and when Herold now imagines that he was unsuccessful in his endeavours, she visits him alone and makes clear that she reciprocates his love.
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