Theatrical producer Max "Poli" Polikoff visits ballet instructor Madame La Sylph to discuss his desire to stage a new show starring Andre Sanine, a brilliant dancer who was once La Sylph's student. La Sylph is wary of Poli's plan, as Sanine has not danced since his wife Nina's death onstage seven months earlier. Police detective Specs McFarlan suspects that the mentally unstable Sanine murdered Nina, although over the months, La Sylph has tried to downplay Sanine's own proclamations that he killed his wife. The coroner had ruled that Nina died from a heart attack caused by years of heart disease, and the devoted nursing of young ballerina Haidi has helped to restore Sanine's health so that he is able to refute McFarlan's accusations. Sanine admits that he used to hallucinate upon hearing the music for Le Spectre de la Rose , the ballet that he and Nina were dancing the night of her death, but insists that he is now cured. Poet Lionel Gans, who is in love with Haidi, resents her attentions to Sanine and encourages the police to continue investigating him. Meanwhile, Sanine is enthusiastic about Poli's plan to stage a new production of Le Spectre de la Rose and begins rehearsals with Haidi. The dancers rapidly fall in love and are soon married, much to the dismay of both La Sylph and Gans. As the rehearsals continue, Sanine begins to show signs of stress, and La Sylph worries that he is again experiencing hallucinations, during which he imagines that the Rose character has taken him over and that he must kill his partner. One afternoon, La Sylph confides in Haidi that the night of Nina's death, she caught Sanine attacking Nina. La Sylph covered Nina's wounds with grease paint and washed away the blood, but Nina died from the after-effects of the attack while she was dancing. Haidi refuses to believe that Sanine could hurt her, however, and opening night soon arrives. Sanine attacks Haidi with a knife before the curtain rises, but she covers her minor wounds and the couple are a success in their debut. The show goes on tour and appears to be doing well until one evening, Poli and La Sylph become concerned when Sanine and Haidi do not arrive at the theater. Upon questioning Jibby the pianist, they learn that Haidi spirited Sanine away to a hotel when he appeared to have gone completely insane. At the hotel, Haidi spends three days and nights staying awake nursing her husband in the belief that if she can cure him herself, he will not be institutionalized or arrested. Exhausted, Haidi finally falls asleep, and the "Specter of the Rose" taunts Sanine into taking up his knife and beginning his frantic dance. Believing that Haidi is Nina, whom he hated, Sanine dances with his knife held at her throat, but memories of Haidi's words of love prompt him to lay down the weapon. Knowing that he will murder Haidi if he does not kill himself first, Sanine leaps out the window to his death. A month later, Haidi still mourns her lost love but dances her part of Le Spectre de la Rose in La Sylph's studio, as La Sylph instructs her new students.