This is a story of a wealthy man who, having lost all his money by careless handling, gambling, etc., returns to his home to end it all. His wife, unable to stand the disgrace, secures a divorce and goes to live with her rich father. When he returns to his home, he finds that the rooms are gradually being divested of furniture, and that there is only one servant to greet him, the parlor-maid. He tells her gruffly to leave him unmolested. She, however, being suspicious of his actions, returns to the library, and stops him from killing himself. When he has become sane again, he asks her what right she has to interfere with him. She tells him the story of her life as an object lesson. Her husband, having lost all his first earnings in a mining proposition, committed suicide. Then her baby, which she was obliged to support, died. Feeling helpless and alone, she is about to kill herself when she is called back to earth by the pitiful wailing of a baby. Investigating, she enters the next room in the boarding house in which she lives, and finds the baby’s mother has died of want. She then finds that there is something to live for, takes the baby and works for it. Not knowing anything else to do, she secures a position in his household as parlor maid and earned enough money to place the baby in a home to be cared for. The man, after hearing this tale, is ashamed of himself. On asking her what mining company her husband lost his money, which was the cause of his death, he learns it is the company which belonged to his father and which had supported him in luxury all these years. With a new resolve to make up to her for the perfidy of his father, and for her interest in making a man of him, he resolves to work hard and help to give a future to the baby she has intended to bring up.