Father Leonard Winger is nervously preparing for his first sermon, concerned that he does not know "how to touch a human heart". As he rehearses, he receives a frantic call for a priest. He finds a young man, who thinks that he has killed his unfaithful girlfriend at a masquerade party. Father Leonard locates the party and finds the girl unconscious in a back room; she dies at the hospital. Detective Sergeant Prouser investigates, knowing that Father Leonard knows what happened, but is holding to the sanctity of the confessional.