This picture deals with the fates of Gaston Beauvais, an aristocratic young banker of Paris, and Pauline de Chauvilles, his fiancée. Beauvais discovers that Sylvion, his best friend, has long carried on a clandestine love affair with Pauline. An artist acquaintance urges Gaston to comfort himself with absinthe. Gaston in his despair yields. From that moment the wreck of his career begins. Maddened by absinthe, he denounces Pauline at the marriage-altar on his wedding day, as Sylvion's cast-off mistress. Still driven by absinthe, he murders Sylvion and ultimately his brutalities drives Pauline, now a pitiful outcast of the streets, for she fled her home in shame after Gaston cast her off, to end her pathetic existence in the dark waters of the Seine.

Jim and Mary are a betrothed couple whose devotion to each other is tested when a famous actress comes to town.

As James Abbott, Frank Arthur and Martin Wynne, college chums, are bidding farewell to one another at the commencement ball, James discovers that May Scott, whom he loves, favors Frank. He conceals his disappointment and just before they part, he suggests that each man write on a slip of paper, to be put in the back of his watch, the words "Until we three meet again, Thursday, June 12th, ten years from today."