Unscrupulous stockbroker George Howard convinces Robert Sterling that he is having an affair with Robert’s wife Helen aided by Robert’s former flame, Rita Lawson who wants him for herself. Though Robert believes the lie, divorcing Helen and gaining custody of their child, Helen still wants nothing to do with George. Mad with desire he kidnaps her daughter and demands Helen sleep with him for the girl’s safe return. Forced into a corner, Helen agrees but once her daughter is rescued a struggle ensues with George and he is shot dead. Helen, cleared of wrongdoing reunites with Robert who has realized his folly.
This is not a romance but the biography of the man who now leads our vast forces in France. It shows him from boyhood to his present high command, and the story of his life tells why Pershing was selected to lead the American forces overseas and how he has his own personal account to settle with the ruthless Hun.
Serama, the consort of Lucifer, is driven from Paradise by the Archangel Michael, who commands Conscience to enter human souls to judge and punish them. In the main story, society girl Ruth Somers, a reincarnation of Serama, prepares to marry Cecil Brooke, the wealthiest man of her set. Her guardian, Dr. Norton, an incarnation of Lucifer, constantly accompanies her. Ruth is summoned to the Court of Conscience, where the witnesses, Lust, Avarice, Hate, Revenge and Vanity, testify about Ruth's history of seducing and abandoning men. This behavior resulted in the suicide of Madge, the lover of Ned Langley, whom Ruth enthralled and promised to marry, and also the deaths of two rivals for her love. Ruth is ordered back to earth to learn her sentence. When Ned interrupts the wedding, Ruth scorns him and he shoots himself. After Brooke leaves her, the Court dooms Ruth to live with the torment of remembrance. Ruth sends Norton away, and then kneels and repents.
When Bob Stratton returns from war in France, he soon discovers his ranch in the hands of a pretty girl, Mary Thorne, who explains that upon her father's death she became the sole owner. Thorne had been the executor of Stratton's will, and thinking that Bob had been killed, he had appropriated the place for himself.
Conchita Cordova sings in the cathedral choir in her village of San Miguelito near the Rio Grande. Millionaire oil man John Rannie, whose oil fields have displaced the peasants, desires Conchita, and when he learns that her fiance, Juan Mendoza, has been employed by Adolf Wylie, a German spy, Rannie threatens to expose Juan unless Conchita gives herself to him.
A Parisian doctor, infatuated with the wife of his benefactor, drugs and kidnaps her, and tries to convince the husband that she is dead. This film is lost.
When a train crash kills Horace Barney, the heir to a fortune that his doctors and guardians were planning to extort the unscrupulous trio quickly substitute his double Jack Trevor who by chance was on the same locomotive but knocked unconscious. Once awakened, Jack realizes the duplicity but plays along to try and foil the plot and save the estate for Barney’s cousin Helen who is the true heir and with whom he has fallen in love.
Loutish Teddy Brant feeling trapped by his marriage and family commitments to the sweet Rose and their infant daughter Helen fakes his suicide and embarks on a dissolute life. Thinking herself free Rose remarries, and time passes contently. Years later, Teddy, now a hopeless derelict, wanders the country straying one night into the waiting room of a train station. He sees a young girl being accosted by an elderly gentleman who tries to entice her home. Teddy thinks nothing of the incident until he finds a purse lying on the seat and learns that the girl is his daughter Helen. Teddy hastens after them and in the ensuing fight, strangles Helen's assailant and then flees. Helen is arrested for the murder but is acquitted when Teddy staggers into the police station and confesses to the crime.
Warren Schuyler, a wealthy widower in a small Eastern town, is highly-respected until the citizens are financially ruined by devaluation of the oil stock he sold them. His daughter Ellen's New York socialite fiance' Roy Phelps deserts her after her father dies, but fellow townsman John Barrett comes to her aid, and she marries him out of gratitude. After three years of irritation from her mother-in-law, she again meets Roy and is persuaded to leave her husband and child, but on perceiving Roy's fraudulence, and following a serious illness, she reunites with John.
Early sound short starring Lionel Atwill.
Hoping to reconcile her divorced parents, Norris Gradley remains with her father, Giles, after he marries another woman. The new Mrs. Gradley snubs and mistreats Norris, who earns money by disguising herself as a boy and playing the violin at dances. Claude Wolcott, employed by Giles to drill oil wells, falls in love with Norris.
Faced with the tragic responsibility of choosing between the happiness of her 16-year-old daughter Pamela or saving the life of an innocent man, Marie Baudin's first impulse is to sacrifice all for her own. But she has second thoughts that bring complications to all.
A woman writes about her sister's tragedy, vowing to help others in similar situations: Because Bettina longs to leave her country home, her loving mother sends her and her serious-minded elder sister to London, accepting their aunt's invitation to visit and allow Bettina to be introduced to society. The girls' dressmaker steals the aunt's photograph and sends it to a woman who, disguised as their aunt, leads the girls to a brothel. After the elder sister escapes, aided by her concerned male companion, she races in a cab to her aunt's home, but is frustrated in her attempt to rescue Bettina by her aunt's infirm state, the inefficiency of the police, and her own inability to remember the location of the house. She finds her cab driver, but he is drunk and soon dies in an accident. After falling ill, the sister, convinced by a dream that Bettina has died, resolves to devote her life to saving other women.
Wealthy New York contractor Wilton Demarest falls victim to the wiles of beautiful adventuress Mazora. Soon, he becomes addicted to drugs, neglects his wife and child, and his business is on the verge of ruin. By chance he meets his double, western mining engineer Martin Stanley. Demarest, half mad due to his drug addiction, conceives the fantastic idea of having Stanley take his place in the world enabling him to indulge in his degraded desires. Stanely, penniless and alone in the world accepts the proposition despite his reservations. Demarest drops into oblivion and Stanley picks up the scattered threads of his life, both in business and at home. The "at home" part is what causes complications.
Seth Cartwright abandons his mistress Bernice Archer and their child, Lorna returning to his wife and son. Bernice, in a daze, leaves Lorna, who is adopted by Cartwrght's wife, who knows full well who the child's father is. Unfortunately, she and her husband are killed in a shipwreck, but it turns out Lorna and her real mother are reunited because of the wreck, and settle in a small seaside town. Matters get complicated when Seth Jr. arrives in the town for a vacation and falls in love with Lorna--not knowing that she is his half-sister.
Rich wastrel Baron Chevrial fritters his days and nights away pursuing a series of young lovelies and playing with their affections. He is smitten with the charms of Rosa, dancer of the Opera Comique, but marries the prominent Therese Beauchamp while still remaining involved with Rosa. Eventually a new woman enters his life and for a time he is oblivious to everything else until Rosa reenters his sphere.
Ellinor, who was unofficially adopted as an orphan by 'Old Peter,' who maintained a lighthouse on a virtually deserted beach, has grown up wild and nearly silent. As she blossoms into full womanhood, she longs to know more about the world. One day a mutinous sailor swims to shore and declares that they are married, after tossing a pair of rings into the sea. He soon flees, but promises to return for her. Wealthy widower George Hudson, the richest man in the nearby port village, also falls for the fascinating, attractive young woman. He convinces her to go to a finishing school for a year and then marry him. They both find that the sea still holds a powerful pull on the soul. Which is stronger: love or the sea's magic spell?
When jealousy and envy lead Mary Vantyne to make a foolish decision and commit an impulsive act she sets off a series of events that nearly bring heartbreak to all those in her circle.
After being disinherited by their wealthy father for their wild and irresponsible ways, two brothers embark on vastly different paths. One turns to crime and the other follows the straight and narrow falling in love along the way. When their paths cross again both find their lives in danger and only one will emerge safely.
Two sisters, Julia Crossland and Evelyn Jefferson, happy lives are thrown into turmoil when a man from their past, Thomas Chadwick reappears unexpectedly. Both had at one time been smitten with Thomas writing indiscreet letters to him. When Chadwick is killed, they fear their secret will be revealed.