Delia, a secretary in Oxford, is promiscuous with undergraduates. She is ambitious and deliberarely becomes pregnant by Julian to trap him into marriage, hoping that he would become a rich industrialist. When he becomes a schoolmaster, she is by turns vindictive and manipulative and utterly unscrupulous in scheming to secure a Headship for Julian for which he is unsuited,but which gives her scope for her own unorthodox and ruthless ambitions.