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Place: Holland, at the home of Léna's parents
Time: Winter
Scene 1
Léna and her cousin Kornélis, who is a recent orphan, live with her parents. She enters his study one morning to find he is not there. The study is in disarray with books, papers, and Kornélis' half-finished artistic endeavours strewn all over the place. Many of the objects reflect his interest in Japan. Léna starts to clean up everything for him and notes that he must have stayed up working all night. She finds a poem that confirms her suspicion that he is in love with the Japanese woman painted on the panel hung in the cabinet. Exasperated, she admits her secret love for her cousin and expresses her jealousy and spite for having to compete with a mere image for her cousin's affections.
Scene 2
Kornélis returns to his room, absorbed in his thoughts. Léna asks him what he is so preoccupied with and whether he is happy. Kornélis evades her questions, but admits to his love for Japan and his desire to go there. An argument erupts when Léna seizes a small bottle that Kornélis brought back with him that morning, and of which he refuses to reveal the contents. She leaves his room in a huff.
Scene 3
Léna contemplates her cousin's behaviour and begins to fret more and more over his obsessions. She wonders whether or not she should give up on him.
Scene 4
Kornélis resumes pursuing his love affair with Japan, particularly fixating on his portrait of Ming, after the departure of Léna. He takes out his potion, supposedly from the Orient, and drinks it. The potion contains opium, and Kornélis continues his obsessive behaviour in a drugged state.
Scene 5
Léna returns to Kornélis's room and finds him in a delirious state, lost in his daydreams. As Kornélis sinks deeper into his hallucinations, the Dutch cabinet transforms into a Japanese interior. Kornélis declares his passionate love to the woman who he thinks is Ming but is in fact a surprised Léna. She realises that he is in a deluded state and rejects his advances before fleeing the room in fear of more erratic behaviour. Kornélis eventually collapses on an armchair and the Dutch cabinet regains shape as he passes out. Léna, returning prudently, finds him in the armchair dreaming. He awakes and she angrily reproaches him for his wild behaviour and his madness for loving a dream, a woman who only exists in his imagination. As she rants, Kornélis' eyes are opened and he becomes aware of how much he actually loves Léna. He offers an apology, which she hesitantly accepts. They admit their love for one another and the opera ends.
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