While riding by the seaside on his horse, Scott meets Peggy (Joan Bennett), a brunette, the mysterious wife of Tod (Charles Bickford), who was a painter before going blind. At first, though, he rides by her as she stands near a shipwreck protruding from the sand; she seems like an eerie echo from his nightmares. After a conversation, they discover that they share similar metaphysical anxieties. A bond develops between the two but the situation gets more tangled when Tod tries to befriend Scott. Tod's attitude toward Scott, apart from his friendship, is also ambivalent. The retired artist tries to test Peggy and Scott to gauge how far they could go in their relationship. Outwardly Tod seems confident; he even tells Peggy that he knows she could never leave him and that he finds Scott, a much younger man, virile but banal.