Inga (Carol Dempster), a Polish war orphan, struggles to provide for the family that has taken her in while accumulating a meager dowry from the rubble of a depression-stricken Berlin so that she can marry Paul (Neil Hamilton). Returning to his family, weakened by the battlefront's poisonous gases, Paul invests in his and Inga's future by tending a secret garden which he hopes will provide resources for them to live, and which serves as a powerful symbol of the irrepressible optimism of the two young lovers rising triumphantly from the ashes of a bitter earth.