Motion picture actress Doria Dane (Edna Goodrich) gives up her career to play muse to sculptor George Steele (Herbert Evans). With Doria's help, Steele overcomes his Bohemian excesses and stays away from the influence of the jealous but wealthy Mrs. Schuyler (Miriam Folger). He finally achieves success, but he also begins to neglect Doria. When she catches him kissing the dreaded Mrs. Schuyler, Doria decides to leave him. But when she goes to his studio to drop off her farewell note, she discovers another sculptor, Harry North, copying one of Steele's masterpieces. Later she comes over to Steele's studio and, in front of a crowd of people, smashes the statue to bits. Then she takes them over to North's studio and explains that she switched the two statues, and reveals North as a fraud. At the base of the real statue she has left a letter of reconciliation to Steele.

When her stepmother attempts to marry her off for the family's financial gain, sensitive and beautiful Edna takes drastic measures, disfiguring herself. The scarred woman falls in love with handsome author Marcus Auriel, but soon learns that her shallow stepsister Dorothy is a rival for his affection.

Nancy Page is a frivolous socialite until her husband Richard becomes entangled in his employer David Davenport's shady business dealings.

Engrossed in the perfection of a new high power explosive, the husband seems to neglect his wife. She is further piqued by the introduction into their home of a man whose presence is unexplained, but who is really a Secret Service operative guarding the invention. The Government has asked that the wife be kept in ignorance. In this frame of mind the wife lends a ready ear to Aachen, who suggests that the husband be taught a lesson by the abstraction of this all-absorbing formula. Through this means he gets the formula, but in the end the Government gathers him in, and the only permanent result is a needed lesson to the innocent little traitor.