- Despite her literary ambitions, country girl Elinor Crawford has advanced no further than a reporter for a New York scandal sheet. During one of her assignments, she meets Evan Kilvert, a lawyer from her home town who is shocked at her Bohemian mode of existence. Elinor has nothing but scorn for him and turns her attentions to Bertie Vawtry, the editor of a racey weekly. He professes to love her, but when Vawtry suddenly marries a wealthy widow, Elinor, disheartened, disappears and it is assumed that she has gone away with Vawtry. Kilvert finds her poverty-stricken in the slums and they are wed. Soon after, married life palls upon her, and Elinor pays a visit to one of her old haunts where she meets Vawtry, whose wife has died. Elinor spurns him, but her husband suspects the worst and as a result she leaves him. Kilvert, learning that his wife has been faithful, finds her in the street depressed and dazed and brings her home. He then administers a beating to her would-be seducer.
- Elinor Crawford came to New York to attain a career as a writer. Evan Kilvert, an attorney in her home town, had courted her and failed to win her love. Her nearest approach to fame was an assignment as special writer upon scandalous topics for a newspaper of sensational bent. Her life in New York centered around Washington Square, where she established an apartment with Francesca Taft, an artist who had gained some renown in the "Bohemian" colony. When Elinor is assigned by her editor to get a story from Evan Kilvert, now established in New York, on the topic of a famous murder case in which he figured as the defendant's attorney she fulfills her duty and meets Kilvert for the first time in some years. An old acquaintance renewed gradually ripens into a revival of Kilvert's affection for Elinor, and, to some degree, an awakening of the girl's love for her old admirer. Kilvert's unbending hatred for New York's "fast life" and the denizens of "Bohemia" is something that Elinor finds hard to countenance, and when she introduces him to "her set" he remonstrates with her for living a life of such unmaidenly freedom. Upon Kilvert's views of life Elinor bases a satirical story and takes it to the editor of sensational magazine in the hope of selling it. Not alone does the editor, Bertie Vawtry, buy the manuscript, but professes a sudden regard for the authoress. The acquaintance thus formed brings Vawtry frequently into Elinor's "Bohemia" and the engagement of Vawtry and Elinor to be married is eventually understood. Elinor's happiness is later wrecked by Vawtry's perfidy. He sends her a note that he has married, for her money, a rich widow to whom he is obligated for the funds that started his magazine. Keeping her secret, Elinor leaves her "Bohemia" and her disappearance is coupled by Francesca Taft and her other friends with the coincident absence of Vawtry. Elinor comes upon privation and falls exhausted before the window of a café where Kilvert is at luncheon. The lawyer goes to her, insists that she eat at his table and in the long run they marry. For a while Elinor delights in her newer and better life, but when she learns that Vawtry's wife is divorcing him she longs for her old association, and decides to have just one more evening of freedom. Kilvert has guessed her lapse of principle, knows of her tryst with Vawtry, and surprises Elinor at late dinner with her old admirer in the café before which she had previously been stricken by privation. Elinor, upon realizing that her husband has discovered her perfidy, flees from the café and is lost to Kilvert for months. Francesca Taft learns from Vawtry that Elinor is not with him; that she has been lost to all of her acquaintances. Hastening to tell Kilvert that Elinor is not, at least, openly unfaithful, Francesca then bides her time until Elinor shall at last seek her old haunts, and then hopes to arrange a reconciliation. Kilvert has meantime determined to silence Vawtry's slanderous tongue and lashes the journalist into submission with blows from an avenging horsewhip. And then when Elinor, driven to desperation by poverty, seeks him out, through the medium of Francesca, he takes his wife into his home and folds her once more to his heart.
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