As an unsophisticated young girl, Myra Willard is seduced into "marrying" James Rutledge and bears his child, Gertrude; but his legal wife in a fit of rage disfigures Myra's face with acid and leaves marks on the child, causing Myra to retreat from the eyes of the world to a mountain village. Thirty years later, she arranges her daughter's marriage to Edward Taine, a rich, elderly man. Later, in Paris, Gertrude meets and falls in love with Aaron King, a young artist, and induces her husband to help him. Hoping to break up the relationship, Taine has Aaron, Gertrude, and young James Rutledge, Jr., accompany him to his camp in the mountains. There, Aaron meets Sybil, daughter of novelist Conrad LaGrange, and falls in love with her. But when she is humiliated by Gertrude, Sybil allows James, Jr., to accompany her home, where he attempts to seduce her. The disfigured Myra enters and, recognizing Rutledge's son, is about to kill him, but he is saved by the arrival of Gertrude and Aaron; Myra reveals her identity, and Sybil learns that Gertrude's flirtation with Aaron is innocent, thus effecting a reconciliation between the two.