Vivek is a student at early 21 century Cambridge, a university that seems like paradise to him, amongst bright if cynical companions, when he receives a visit from two friends, an engaged young woman, Agnes Pembroke, and her elder brother, Herbert. The Pembrokes are Vivek only friends from home. An orphan who grew up living with cousins, he was sent to a private boarding school where he was shunned and bullied because of his lame foot, an inherited weakness, and frail body. Agnes, as it happens, is engaged to Nishi, now in the army, who was one of the sturdy youths who bullied Vivek at school. Vivek is not brilliant at argument, but he is intensely responsive to poetry and art, and is accepted within a circle of philosophical and intellectual fellow-students led by a brilliant but especially cynical aspiring philosopher, Stewart Ansell, who refuses, when he is introduced to her, even to acknowledge that Agnes exists.
When visiting the Pembrokes during his vacation, Vivek has an epiphanic vision of the sexual bond between Nishi, who is coarse but handsome and athletic, and Agnes, a bond he cannot imagine for himself. He takes these lovers' side in trying to speed their marriage, offering part of his own inheritance, an offer that insults Nishi. When Nishi is suddenly killed in a football match, Vivek finds a role consoling Agnes—he tells her she should "mind" what has happened, that is, that she should grieve—since her passion for Nishi has been the main event of her life. Vivek becomes Agnes' chief consolation and support, though he is in every way Nishi opposite, and after a year or two, despite the failure of Vivek stories to find a publisher, he and Agnes become engaged to marry.