Jack Craigen, an engineer who has just finished a construction job in South Africa, returns to New York. There, at the home of his Uncle Cannell, he meets stage-struck society girl Helen Steele and her playwright fiancé Tracey. Scheming to win the lead in their new production, The Siren , Helen wagers Cannell and Tracey that she can vamp Jack--a notorious woman-hater--and have him propose to her in a week.

Aerial dancer La Syrena, whose jealous husband kills her while she performs in midair. Her daughter, Jennie Raeburn, soon orphaned, grows up unaware of her mother's occupation, but nonetheless feels the urge to dance.

Ne'er-do-well Joe Louden scandalizes his small town and especially the proper Judge Pike. But through the love of young Ariel Taber, Joe shows the town who the real scoundrel is.

A.J. Raffles, an educated and handsome cricket champ with entry to the best social circles steals precious trinkets and jewels, purely for the love of the game and the thrill of the chase, outwitting police and detectives.

Edward Thursfield, chief engineer of the bridge building firm of Henry Killick and Company, is building the largest concrete bridge in the world. Employed in the New York office is a young man named Arnold Faringay. Arnold sees an opportunity of using money from the payroll for a big deal.

John Glayde is a stone-hearted man intent on wealth to elevate his family, losing his wife to another man in the process.

Jaffery Chayne is the spectacular one of four chums, the others being Hilary Freeth, a literary man, Adrian Boldero, a short story writer, and Tom Castleton, a playwright. The story opens with Tom Castleton going on a voyage for his health and leaving with his friend, Adrian, the manuscript of the first novel he ever attempted. Shortly after Castleton's trip, he dies at sea and when word is received by Adrian of his friend's death, the temptation to secure the girl he loves by publishing his friend's novel and taking the money and credit from it is so strong that he succumbs and becomes the "literary lion of the hour."

Jack Brookfield, a gambler with clairvoyant and hypnotic powers, is able to win at cards through his unique gift. But when he inadvertently hypnotizes young Clay Thorne, Thorne kills an enemy of Brookfield's while under a trance. No one believes Brookfield's protestations that Thorne is innocent of any murderous intent

Viola Drayton (Minter) has a fascination for fairies, but real life intervenes when her father, a colonel (W.T. Carleton), is called off to the European War (that's what they called World War I in early 1915). He leaves Viola in the care of the Nevisons (Herbert Wilke and Ina Brookes) and gives them thirty thousand dollars to invest on her behalf. When word arrives that Drayton has been killed in battle, Mr. Nevison takes Viola's money for himself, but he squanders it and his wife has to take in boarders. Viola hates her life at the Nevisons so she runs away and gets a job at a theater playing...a fairy.

Loyal slave of the aristocratic Dabney family, Dan is overjoyed when Raoul becomes engaged to Northerner Elsie Hammond and his sister Grace becomes engaged to Elsie's brother John. When the Civil War breaks out, the heartbroken Hammonds return North and John joins the Union army. Raoul joins the Confederacy, but his vindictive overseer, Jonas Watts, becomes a Union officer. Watts takes Grace prisoner, but before he can act on his desires, John rescues her.