In a Caribbean mansion the millionaire, Valerian, and his younger wife, Margaret, live as if in a troubled sleep. Their comforts are supplied by a black servant couple. Into this family, come a beautiful black protegee of Valerian (a student at the Sorbonne in Paris) and Son, a criminal on the run, uneducated, violent, contemptuous - an American black from small-town Florida. Each is a threat to the other’s identity.