[1] Fernando Tobajas, a middle-aged man with an advantageous economic position, decides one day to live in the bathroom, which he has modified so that it looks like a small apartment, and never leave it.
He is a man who has renounced everything except his vanity, and his contacts with the world are reduced to visits from friends and the messages he sends, enclosed in tubes of aspirin, down the toilet, in the hope that someone will find them.
Arabel Lee, a beautiful girl, finds one of these messages; one in which this modern anchorite reflects on Saint Anthony and the Queen of Sheba.
Mr. Boswell, a mature English millionaire and lover of the girl, who cannot resign himself to losing her, devises a system to recover Arabel; he manages to leave the anchorite alone with her, without service and without money.
They both discover that the relationship will not last long: Fernando, outside of the bathroom, would be a vulgar and uninteresting guy and, on the other hand, how would he offer Arabel the lifestyle to which she is accustomed?