Rebelling against a forced engagement to Schuyler, Victoria falls in love with young attorney David Courtney and marries him. At first they are happy, but when David is drawn into political corruption and accepts the attentions of other women, she tries to compete with them, then denounces him. When he runs for U.S. Senator, she is nominated as a dark-horse candidate against him and wins. He is indicted for bribery during the campaign and while in prison is redeemed through her visits. In each crisis Victoria dreams of the women of corresponding ages: the stone age, the age of chivalry, Amazons and their supremacy over men, the life of debauchery in the Roman era, and the dawn of Christianity in her dream of David as Constantine and herself as a Christian slave who converts the pagan world.