Donald Bradley (Lyman Williams) is working in the offices of his father's steamship company in New York City where, after a stint at sea, he has just been given complete charge of all the company's ships. Joan (Diane Sinclair), his fiancée, longs for marriage and a baby but nevertheless insists on waiting a while longer. Donald breaks a theatre engagement with Joan to talk business with Nat Franklin (Harry Myers), the head of a competing company. They go to a night club with Nat's friend Elise Cooper (Charlotte Merriam) where Nat, intoxicated, flirts with Rosie (Cecilia Parker), the companion of another shipping magnate, Old Man Jackson (Phillips Smalley). Jackson invites them all to his house where a party is in progress. When Nat leaves with Rosie it falls to Donald take Elise home. They go first to a speakeasy before ending up at her apartment where she seduces him. The next day Donald, feeling guilty, confesses to Joan, who reacts by deciding that they must marry immediately and rushes him out into the night to be married by a Justice of the Peace (Harry Todd) in a two-dollar ceremony. Later a frantic Elise telephones Donald and insists he visit her. He is let into her apartment by a nurse who informs him that Elise has attempted suicide by poison. Elise warns him that there is something wrong with Nat and she now knows that she has got "it" and may have passed it on to Donald and his wife. Refusing to believe her, Donald starts to leave, whereupon she shoots herself fatally. The nurse telephones a doctor and then the police. Donald is questioned by the police and his name appears in the newspapers in connection with the suicide. He refuses to talk to his parents or Joan about what has happened and instead tells Joan that he doesn't love her and walks out. After reading a newspaper advertisement Donald goes to see the phony Doctor Hortonn (Harrison Greene) who assures him, for $100 cash - almost $2,000 in today's money, that he is perfectly healthy. He promptly returns to Joan and reconciles with her. One night as they prepare to sleep Joan tells Donald she has something wonderful to tell him. At this moment Joan is interrupted by a telephone call from her friend Marie (Gladys Blake), worried that she has forgotten that she is pregnant and has taken a bath. After Donald has hung up the telephone, lying in bed tight in her husband's arms, Joan whispers her secret in his ear. Overjoyed at what he hears, Donald leaps out of bed and rushes to the mirror and instructs his reflection to, "Congratulate me, I'm going to be a father." He then puts out his hand and shakes it. Donald is then congratulated by his family and friends, one by one. Later Donald's friend and physician, Bill Hall (Jason Robards), takes him to see a specialist in 'social' diseases, Dr. Vincent Leonard (Murray Kinnell). Dr. Leonard has already diagnosed Joan as having a disease and she is at the clinic when Donald arrives. He tells Donald that he has a venereal disease. At first he refuses to accept the situation but Dr. Leonard takes him on a tour of his clinic and shows him a variety of patients (five in all) suffering various effects of venereal disease and tells how each contracted it, some innocently, others less so. He tells Donald that if he and Joan begin a two-year course of treatment immediately they will almost certainly be cured and their unborn baby will be unaffected. Bill drives them home where they are disconcerted to find Captain Jensen (Victor Potel) waiting for them with a crib as a gift. That night, while Donald sleeps, Joan turns on the gas in their apartment in a double suicide attempt but Donald wakes in time. Over Donald's protests she says that they are dead inside, that they will despise each other, and asks what it would be like to live without ever being able to laugh again. At this moment Joan's friend Marie calls again, this time worried that she has forgotten about her condition and has eaten pickles. This causes Joan and Donald to burst out laughing.
