A beautiful, intelligent woman has an affair with a pastor. Rather than reveal the name of the father of her child, she wears the scarlet "A" the townspeople foist upon her as punishment for her transgression rather than buckle under to their tyrannical demands. The relationship between this punished woman and the pastor will be in danger when her husband, who was presumably dead, returns to the village and finds aout what has happened to his wife while he was gone, he will seek for vengeance and the unknown lover will be his target.