Editor Arabella Atherton, a modest and not very beautiful twenty-seven-year-old girl, is in love with a literary character - the hero of the best-selling series she is working on - the handsome, noble, courageous intelligence officer Palfrey. In real life, such men, of course, do not exist. But then a miracle happens: she meets Palfrey in the flesh (though his name is different), and love breaks out between them.