If there have been opportunities to meet decent women of good social standing, he has always thrown them aside with the declaration that they bore him to death, and there never had entered into his heart a feeling or idea of real affection until he met LAURA.  He fell for a moment under the spell of her fascination, and then, with cold logic, he analyzed her, and found out that, while outwardly she had every sign of girlhood,—­ingenuousness, sweetness of character and possibility of affection,—­spiritually and mentally she was nothing more than a moral wreck.  He observed keenly her efforts to win him and her disappointment at her failure—­not that she cared so much for him personally, but that it hurt her vanity not to be successful with this good-for-nothing, good-natured vagabond, when men of wealth and position she made kneel at her feet.  He observed her slowly-changing point of view:  how from a kittenish ingenuousness she became serious, womanly, really sincere.  He knew that he had awakened in her her first decent affection, and he knew that she was awakening in him his first desire to do things and be big and worth while.  So together these two began to drift toward a path of decent dealing, decent ambition, decent thought, and decent love, until at last they both find themselves, and acknowledge all the wickedness of what had been, and plan for all the virtue and goodness of what is to be.  It is at this point that our first act begins.

ELFIE ST. CLAIR is a type of a Tenderloin grafter in New York, who, after all, has been more sinned against than sinning; who, having been imposed upon, deceived, ill-treated and bulldozed by the type of men who prey on women in New York, has turned the tables, and with her charm and her beauty has gone out to make the same slaughter of the other sex as she suffered with many of her sisters.

She is a woman without a moral conscience, whose entire life is dictated by a small mental operation.  Coming to New York as a beautiful girl, she entered the chorus.  She became famous for her beauty.  On every hand were the stage-door vultures ready to give her anything that a woman’s heart could desire, from clothes to horses, carriages, money and what-not; but, with a girl-like instinct, she fell in love with a man connected with the company, and, during all the time she might have profited and become a rich woman by the attentions of these outsiders, she remained true to her love, until finally her fame as the beauty of the city had waned.  The years told on her to a certain extent, and there were others coming, as young as she had been and as good to look at; and, where the automobile of the millionaire had once been waiting for her, she found that, through her faithfulness to her lover, it was now there for some one else.  Yet she was content with her joys, until finally the man deliberately jilted her and left her alone.