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This drama was based on the novel The Love Serum by Gouverneur Morris. Bootlegging lovers Joe Strickland (Conway Tearle) and Bessie Hayes (Agnes Ayres) have a parting of the ways and both decide to reform. Bessie becomes a manicurist and lands a wealthy husband who turns out to be miserly and mean. Strickland saves society girl Marion Winslow (Alyce Mills) from drowning, and after he becomes a civil engineer, he marries her. Bessie is being blackmailed by one of her former associates, and when she meets up with Strickland once again, he makes an effort to help her. This does not please Marion, who doesn't understand the situation and becomes jealous. To help mend Strickland's relationship with his wife, Bessie decides to come clean about her background. Although the couple is reconciled, Bessie is not so fortunate. She discovers that "the world never forgives a woman who sins" (it was a decidedly different world back in the 1920s) and kills herself.