Shortly after World War I erupts, George Ghikas starts having recurring dreams about an unknown dancing girl. Because of his Greek origins, the British army sends him behind enemy lines on occupied Crete to organize partisan groups in the White Mountains. In the course of this mission, George has hallucinations of the same dancing girl of his earlier dreams. Progressively, he is enmeshed in a 3,600-year-old world, where he appears to have been the victim of a sacrificial ceremony in a Minoan temple near the monastery he uses as his base camp. The girl haunting his dreams and hallucinations was a priestess at that ancient ceremony in the temple, eventually destroyed by an earthquake. George narrowly avoids a suicide attempt by re-enacting the sacrificial ceremony of so long ago, but the temple is once again destroyed, this time by German bombs.