Harvey Arnold, a gambler who flees San Francisco for a small country town during a reform movement, captures the affections of May Fielding. She marries and elopes with Harvey, despite the pleas of her childhood sweetheart, David Armstrong, who leaves brokenhearted for the Canadian Northwest. In the city, when May discovers Arnold's occupation, he promises to quit, but after his partner, Jack Estabrook, arranges a police raid so that he can have May, Arnold kills him. When Arnold flees, May learns that he is still married to another woman. After May loses a job as a model for rejecting the advances of a buyer, David, who learns from a newspaper of Arnold's crime, arrives and persuades May, who says that she is through with marriage and men, to return to his homestead as his wife "in name only." Later, Arnold finds the couple and May protects him from the mounted police. Arnold demands to take May back, and wounds David. As May threatens suicide, the police arrive and kill the fleeing Arnold. May's concern over David's wound turns into love for him.