The young nurse Siv is frustrated by the strict restraints of her religious parents and her boring fiancé, Sven. At the hospital where she works a patient Heinz, a married antiques dealer flirts with her. Although she is warned that he is a philandering playboy, she allows him to seduce her and they have an affair. He tells her that he loves her and proposes to leave his wife for her. Having only just discovered a new world of sexual liberty, she rejects his proposal. She then breaks off her engagement with Sven, moves away from her parents and finds a nursing position in another city. She meets Lars, a sailor, and they begins a relationship. When he proposes marriage, she breaks up with him. She begins dating Doctor Dam at the hospital where she works. He also falls in love with her, so she stops seeing him and decides that no single man will ever completely fulfill her own desires. She has a sexual encounter with a stranger, Eric who she realizes perfectly matches her own promiscuity.