Fourteen-year-old Stephan swims like a fish and looks like a Michelangelo statue as he plays in the sea off the Lido di Venezia beach in Venice in 1924. As he stretches and dries off on the sand, he is ogled by expatriate American banker Jeremy Biddle, German doctor Reinhard Gleason, English patrician Sir Clarence Hailley, and French priest Father Franz. Each of the men aches in want for the boy and each of them has him--but at a price.