Mary Lynde (Theda Bara) is an innocent girl who has grown up in New York's Greenwich Village. One of the artists there, Felix Benavente (Sidney Mason), uses her as model when he paints a portrait of the Madonna for a church. His friend Robert Sinclair (Hugh Thompson) corrupts Mary so that her...
Mici is the middle of seven sisters, who all believe if a younger sister marries first, the oldest sisters all doomed to be old maids. The elder sisters conspire to have the younger, pretty Mici sent away to a convent school. Mici manages to slip away and attend a fancy party, where she meets Count...
The Hawaiian Princess Laone's love for Keith Parrish is thwarted by social pressure. After being persuaded to refuse Mr. Parrish's proposal she attempts suicide, but is rescued by her lover. After Parrish leaves town to take care of his father, Princess Laone is told he has abandoned her, and she...
The itinerant Jewish country peddler Abraham Jacobs saves his pennies until he can afford to open a small second-hand clothing store. Unfortunately, Abraham's son Sonny has not inherited his father's decent, hardworking instincts so when his mistress, Mrs. Morgan, needs money Sammy robs Abraham's...
Edward Thursfield, chief engineer of the bridge building firm of Henry Killick and Company, is building the largest concrete bridge in the world. Employed in the New York office is a young man named Arnold Faringay. Arnold sees an opportunity of using money from the payroll for a big deal.
Wealthy Richard Covington, although aging and lonely, distresses his children, Waverly and Beatrice, by marrying a heartless seductress named Fay Hope. Because Fay's extravagant spending threatens to ruin Richard, Beatrice confronts her, which prompts Richard, who is hopelessly in love with the...
A schoolteacher in the Yukon promises her hand in marriage to a rich prospector, but instead she marries his no-good brother. After her husband disappears and is reported dead, she marries a rich New York stockbroker, but doesn't tell him about her first marriage. Soon she is contacted by someone...
William Carter, a young Virginian in Paris, becomes enchanted with music hall dancer Fanchon La Fare. After William reluctantly returns to America, Fanchon follows him, and when she is threatened with deportation because of an irregularity in her passport, William marries her. The marriage causes...
Elsie Green cannot decide which of her two suitors to marry. When she reads Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "Feathertop", she dreams that she is its heroine Polly Goodkin, and this leads to her final decision.
Nancy Croyden, born of British nobility, languishes in the slums of New York after she elopes with Terrence Flynn, a groom on her father's estate. Nancy dies there, leaving behind a daughter, Susan Flynn, who grows to adulthood in the Bowery. In search of her family, Susan returns to England where...
When millionaire John Saunders threatens to disinherit his son Wallace if he marries Queen Tina, a circus rider, Wallace elopes with Tina and becomes a trapeze performer.
Dishonored by playboy John Radon, simple country girl Stella Dean flees to the city to hide her shame. Leading a disreputable life she eventually obtains great wealth as a courtesan known as the Black Nightingale. One day she meets Milton Taylor, an artist from her hometown who knew her when she...
When her father's death leaves Virginia Hastings facing a life of poverty, she breaks her engagement to Robert Monti to marry millionaire James Vandam. Unaccustomed to wealth, she entertains lavishly and flirts with many men, although her husband's secretary remains immune to her wiles.
Mr. Norton discovers his wife in the arms of his neighbor, Captain Roberts, a married man. His first maddened impulse is to kill his faithless wife, but on his way for the gun his little child runs to his arms to say good-night. The incident unnerves him and his wild determination is destroyed. He...
