Hope

Cyma Roget, a beautiful young woman, has fallen under the influence of the evil Hindu scientist Chandra Dak, who can cast her at will into a hypnotic state resembling death. Chandra Dak's power over Cyma wanes as his love for her grows, however, and one night she escapes and takes refuge in the atelier of three young and struggling Bohemian artists. During her stay at the atelier, she becomes an artist's model and forms an attachment to one of the artists, Paul Bridere, but soon Chandra Dak falls out of love with Cyma and sends her into a hypnotic coma.

The painter Burne-Jones and his famed painting "The Beggar Maid" are depicted in this speculative drama about the creation of the painting. Burne-Jones plays matchmaker for a young British nobleman who has fallen in love with a servant girl on his estate. The artist shows that love can thrive between members of different classes by depicting on canvas a picture from Tennyson's poem about the love of King Cophetua for a beggar maid. As he relates the story of the poem in words and through his painting, the young earl sees the application to his own situation.