The story involves the themes of fantasy and alchemy, as well as art, love, and uncanny science, and contains the motifs of the King in Yellow.
Through an unusual chemical process, he has also managed to produce a mysterious liquid that turns living beings immersed in it into pure marble representations of themselves.
He demonstrates the solution to his painter friend Alec in an Easter lily and a goldfish, both of which are turned into beautiful white marble sculptures with azure and rose tints.
Mistaking Alec's voice for Boris's, Geneviève, who had stumbled upon a wolf's head in the room and sprained her ankle, collapses in pain, revealing she is alone and injured.
While she is taken care of, Boris, in order to distract himself from distress, turns yet another goldfish into marble with the transformative solution, and then decides to do the same to a white rabbit.
He enters a long-lasting period of illness, with the last thing he remembers before it being Jack saying "For Heaven's sake, doctor, what ails him, to wear a face like that?
Alec is drawn into a period of feverish delirium with terrifying hallucinations involving Boris, Geneviève, and motifs in The King in Yellow.
Before almost reaching full recovery, Alec wonders on his plans to meet Boris and Geneviève again, aiming to leave their lives forever afterward.
Alec, in a fit of rage, sinks into weeks of relapse, after which Jack, in a heartbreaking narrative, reveals what happened to their friends—Geneviève drowned in the pool after falling there under the influence of drugs, becoming a marble sculpture, and Boris shot himself in despair.
The devastating revelation leaves Alec shattered, realizing the finality of their intertwined lives and the profound tragedy that has torn them apart forever.
Upon Jack's urgent request, Alec returns to Paris, where they spend time together, visiting Boris's resting place at the cemetery in Sèvres.