She has a fascination with rainbows and one day she runs away from home looking for the pot of gold at the end of one.

Ursula agrees to become a nude model for a local artist, but she walks out after he makes a pass at her.

He joins the army and goes to fight in the Second Boer War, while she moves to London and gets a job as a schoolteacher at an elementary school in the East End of London, where she has to fend off unwanted advances from the headmaster of the school.

A year later, in the spring of 1901, Ursula returns to the farm and meets Anton, just home from the war, and they begin an affair.

After fighting off an attempted rape by two miners, Ursula gets a telegram from Anton to say he has married someone else and has been posted to British India.