Edith Gilbert, the daughter of Henry Gilbert--a wealthy but bigoted and puritanical reformer--leaves home following her mother's death to seek her fortune on Broadway. Through her boardinghouse roommate, Edith gets work as a cafe dancer. At the cafe, she attracts man-about-town Monte Hermann and also Norman Van Pelt, a youth who falls in love with her. At Hermann's suggestion, Mrs. Alcott, an unsavory society woman, takes Edith under her protective wing; and despite Edith's denials of his base suspicions, Norman leaves for Europe to forget her. Meanwhile, Gilbert, who has married Belle Galloway, a designing spinster, is shocked to learn that Edith is a cabaret dancer and has her committed to a reformatory, where she is crushed mentally and physically. Discovering that Belle is only a scheming hypocrite, however, Gilbert pays her to leave him, and he seeks out Edith to atone for the past. They go abroad, and Edith is happily reunited with Norman.