A twenty-year veteran of the printing room of The San Francisco Chronicle is passed up for a promotion at the same time his son is accused of graft and involved in scandal.
When Silent Sanderson's brother kills himself over the rejection of a woman, Silent blames Judith Benson and leaves the family homestead to begin a new life in Alaska.
Jane Brower wants nothing more than to leave behind her ranch life in the West and go East. When she happens upon a party in the private railroad car of wealthy August Van Dorn, Jane gets the idea to finance her trip by kidnapping his son, Donald, for ransom.
American sculptress Adele La Rue, working in Paris, lacks the inspiration to create a masterpiece, until Jean Ballard, a wild apache leader, takes refuge from the police in her apartment.
After being educated in England, Daisy Forbes returns to China, the country of her birth, and discovers that her father has recently died and that she has become a social outcast, owing to the public revelation that the oriental nurse who raised her was actually her mother.