Frank Stafford, gifted but poor, has been the friend of Hazel White since childhood, and this esteem of years has ripened into love. The young woman has everything that wealth can furnish and her parents, newly rich, have great social aspirations. Stafford expects to make authorship his vocation and is relying hopefully on the acceptance of the manuscript of a novel he has submitted to a publisher. Hazel White's mother, who is a snob by nature, has selected a wealthy club man, Ferguson, as a likely match for her daughter. Thereupon the parents connive to make Hazel break with the poor hut beloved Stafford. On the same evening which the importunate Ferguson calls, urging an answer from Hazel, Stafford has his manuscript returned. Hazel's mother is furious over her rejection of Ferguson, and makes the girl's life miserable. In her despair over the intolerable situation, she writes to Stafford that he must take her away and marry her at once, or she must yield to the parental pressure. Stafford has a terrible struggle between love and duty. He has no income for her support, and would have to deny her all the things to which she was accustomed, and her consequent unhappiness would make both their lives miserable. He steels himself and denies her call, so they part reluctantly. The triumph of Hazel's mother is complete, when the daughter marries Ferguson, whom she loathes. While their wedding-bells are ringing, Stafford receives word from a big publishing house that the second manuscript he submitted has made a pronounced hit; his future seems firmly assured. The bitterness of the blow makes a recluse of him and he enters into n hermit-like life on a wild sea coast, devoting his energies exclusively to literary work, making a reputation on a par with its phenomenal promise. Hazel's married life was far from happy, but now, as a widow, her sole joy in life is a five-year-old daughter. Through some curious stroke of fate, she unwittingly happens to lodge for the summer by the sea, in the vicinity of Frank Stafford's retreat. Her little girl, left in charge of a careless maid, drifts out to sea on a flowing tide in an open boat. When the maid awakens she finds her charge gone; she rushes to the hotel and informs the mother, who rushes out frantic with fear. Frank Stafford, who has been writing on a pinnacle of rock, observes the boat drifting out with the tide, and the child, now awake, despairingly rocking the frail craft. He throws off his coat and shoes and dives from the cliff. He swims out and rescues the child just as the boat capsizes. He takes the little one to his own lonely home. The child soon recovers and is vastly interested in the strange surroundings. In the interim the mother discovers the overturned, drifting boat, and is almost distraught. Frank finally starts out to the resort, leading the little girl. The mother has escaped her restraining friends and is about to throw herself over the cliff, when she meets Stafford and the child. All of her incentive to live has been restored to her, and their own joy comes to crown it and make it complete, with that love seemed lost in the dead, long ago. Written by Moving Picture World synopsis

• Plot Summary

• Short
• Drama
• Romance