During the dinner, Michael summons Irene to his room several times. To get her attention, he throws a temper tantrum but all she does is hit him and return to the dinner. All of the sudden the maid screams and Irene and her husband rush downstairs. Michael has hurled himself from his bedroom window and he is dying. Later in the hospital, Irene learns that her son’s death was most likely not accidental; he tried to kill himself. Torn by guilt and grief, Irene turns to her close friend, Andrew, a Communist, who tries to cheer her up by explaining that there are other families who are worse off. For example, there is a large poor family who can not afford to buy the medicine which would surely cure their child. Irene immediately donates the money for the medicine and is overwhelmed by the warmth and love when she visits the cured child. She finds comfort in doing good deeds and tries to help those she can.
Next, she meets a mother of six who desperately needs a job. Irene finds her a steady factory job and then shows up the first day of work for the mother when she was unable to start. By this time, her husband thinks that Irene, in a fragile mental state after the death of her child, is having an extra-marital affair. Soon after, Irene sees a young girl, a prostitute, whom she had met earlier at the sick child’s apartment building. She is very sick and is waiting for the bus in bad weather. Irene offers to drive her home. When they arrive there, the young women develops a high fever and needs a doctor. Irene searches for a doctor and brings him to the young women in the middle of the night. He announces that her case of Tuberculosis is too far advanced and that she will most likely die within a few days. Aware that this woman has no one to nurse her, Irene stays with her though the night and the next day until her death. The next day, Irene knocks on the neighbors door to announce the young woman’s death. In an ironic twist of fate, the neighboring family is being held at gunpoint by a local bandit who had been wrecking havoc in the city. While the police are on the way, Irene tries to reason with the boy, who is obviously nervous about what he is doing. When the police are nearby, she encourages the young boy to run away so that he can mend his ways. The police take Irene into custody and call her husband who believes that she needs medical attention. She is brought to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation. Her husband thinks she is mentally ill for wanting to help other people and the doctors even go so far as to call her acts of good will communistic. As she is about to be locked away in her little cell, Irene turns to look out her window to watch her husband drive away. There in the driveway the people she has helped disagree furiously with the doctors and declare that Irene’s only problem is that she is a saint.