Sure that his memories are correct, that in a former life he was a cellist named Jean Pierre and that he was deeply in love with a woman named Elise, Philippe pursues the woman who shares his commen dream of the House of Music. Unfortunately, she has no such memories. She has a life in the present which includes a career she likes and a good deal of involvement with her grandchildren. She rejects his advances--until she learns that he is in a sanitarium suffering from TB, when she feels a sudden urge to rush off and nurse him back to health.

On his recovery, he accompanies her to family camp with the children, and while riding and sailing together, they bond. She begins to think it might be possible that they shared a former life, and she agrees to go with him to Vienna, to visit the House of Music and see if it stirs memories in her. At first she does feel the stirrings of distant memory, but in the end the Vienna trip merely serves to increase her doubts, though it convinces him. It is not until their return home, when she walks into her apartment to find him with her family, all of them singing together, that the pieces of her former life fall into place for her.