Details a Christmas dinner at the house of three spinster musician sisters in 1904 Dublin, attended by friends and family. Among the visitors are the sisters' nephew Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta. The evening's reminiscences bring up melancholy memories for Gretta about her first, long-lost love when she was a girl in rural Galway. Her recounting of this tragic love to Gabriel brings him to an epiphany: he learns the difference between mere existence and living.