Demure little Shirley Davis, stenographer, finally permits her employer, Chadwick, to take her out to dinner. The trips become more frequent thereafter, and wine is no longer strange to the erstwhile typist. Chadwick tires of her and discharges her. Embittered by being so lightly and harshly cast aside, she undertakes the primrose path absolutely. A year or two finds her one of the leaders of the midnight crowds. One evening she entertains in her apartment. Chadwick and a few companions, intoxicated, come in unbidden. His words so infuriate her that she announces she is through with the sordid life and orders the entire party from her home. Next day she seeks work as a stenographer. Marvin Dexter, a young broker, skids his machine as he rounds a corner and the girl is knocked down. She is uninjured, however, and when Dexter asks what he can do for her, all she asks is a position. He hires her. Some few years later, Dexter and Shirley, now happily married, are living in a western city. He suddenly meets Chadwick, also a resident of the same city and an old college chum. He invites him to his home. Chadwick attempts to get the old hold on the wife of his friend by threats of revealing her past. Dexter senses it and she tells him all. After his rage at her he sets out with a pistol, ostentatiously to kill Chadwick. Shirley hastens to warn the intended victim, not for his sake, but to save the man she loves from being a murderer. On Chadwick’s doorsteps she discovers his dead body. Dexter arrives a moment later and the police shortly after. “I killed him,” announces Dexter to protect his wife He is alarmed when she tells him she did not kill him. But for Garvey, the detective, Dexter’s confession would have convicted him. But the detective notes the disappearance of Chadwick, Jr., the dead man’s dissolute son. He is captured and confesses that because his father would not pay his increasing debts he shot him. With Chadwick out of the way, Dexter and Shirley start life anew.