Set during the First World War in Portsmouth, Grace is walking out with her childhood sweetheart, Teddy. Teddy joined up during the first year of the war and is serving in the army in Belgium. It is now 1916 and he is home on leave from the front. Teddy proposes but Grace isn't ready to be a wife and mother. She has two brothers who are also at the front, and a sister who works in the munitions factory in Gosport. Now a young woman, working as a parlourmaid in the home of Mrs Simpson, who is a hospital visitor at the Portsmouth Borough Asylum, Grace is happy enough in her work but wonders where the future will take her. She sees her sister go to work in the munitions factory and knows other young women who work in the dockyard, or driving trams and thinks about what else is out there that is more exciting than working in a comfortable house in Southsea. Her future changes when her mistress sees how she handles the breakdown of Mary, the kitchen maid, when Mary is told her sweetheart has died in Belgium. Mrs Simpson encourages Grace to take up nurse training in the Asylum. Grace isn't sure and her parents forbid her to even think about it, but when Mrs Simpson offers to take Grace to the asylum to look around, she begins to wonder if she should go anyway. Still she says no and thinks that maybe she just needs to have a family of her own. When Teddy comes home on leave again, she tells him she's changed her mind and wants to marry straight away. But Teddy says he's also changed his mind and wouldn't want the worry of a wife and possible child at home whilst he was at war. Grace, who has now realised that being a nurse would be what she want to do, at least until the war is over and Teddy comes home again, starts her training, promising herself that she would give it up as soon as the war is over and she can be a full time wife and mother. Before long, Teddy is sent home to Portsmouth, severely injured, having lost both legs and has impaired sight. She visits him in the QA hospital and he tells her he no longer wants her in his life and forbids her to visit again. She is heartbroken but throws herself into her work. Will he ever change his mind?
