Orphan Laura Dayne, an ambitious sculptress, refuses to leave her Greenwich Village studio to live with her loving guardian, famous criminal lawyer Benton Wade, when his mother dies. Wade then marries social butterfly Margaret, who has an affair with Jamison Keene, a licentious architect. Keene's interest soon switches to Laura, and she naïvely accepts his invitation to visit a nearby town where, Keene promises, she will receive the commission to decorate the public library. After Keene tries to rape Laura at a roadhouse, Laura's fiancé, artist Denis Connors, breaks into Keene's room, and when he is ejected by hotel detectives, he says that Keene ought to be killed. The next day, Laura and Denis marry so that he can have the right to protect her, but at the ceremony, he is arrested for Keene's murder, which occurred the previous night. Wade then acts as Keene's defense attorney. After Laura catches Wade about to shoot himself, he confesses to killing Keene the next day in court, and then swallows poison.