Mrs. Burgess explains menstruation to her teen-aged daughter by showing her diagrams in a medical book. Her daughter-in-law Mary then tells Mrs. Burgess that she wishes that she, too, knew more about her body. She also reveals that she may be expecting a baby and is apprehensive about her safety and the changes that a new baby will bring to her life.
During a raid, a cop lets a pretty speakeasy employee escape and later begins dating her. Although she loves him, his salary and dull life leave her wanting.
Millionaire William van Luyn falls in love with his secretary Joan Thayer and marries her. Her family, part of "the great middle class" (as blowhard nephew Henry keeps reminding us), is happy for Joan, but reluctant to take charity from Will. He moves in with them, and they keep resisting, until one day he takes drastic action.
Brothers Hugh and Dan Clayton are both in love with Phyllis, their father's secretary. She finally chooses Hugh, and they marry before he joins the army and is sent overseas as a fighter pilot. He is shot down in a dogfight, crashes and loses his memory and drifts around Europe. Years go by, and Phyllis decides to try to find him in France before consenting to marry Dan, who still loves her. Complications ensue.
An attractive heiress, Carla (May McAvoy), and David (Ralph Graves), a successful artist, fall in love following an automobile accident. and are married. Their idyll is interrupted by a misunderstanding and she gets a Reno-quickie divorce. Years later a chance meeting brings them together.
Chester Binney, a wounded war veteran, erroneously believes he is carrying a silver plate in his head and must avoid all excitement. He returns to his hometown, and there his former employer, George Simmons, attempts to arrange a match between Chester (who is to inherit a fortune) and his daughter Ethel. Ethel, however, finds Chester unexciting as a lover; and to enliven the affair, the father invents a lurid past for the boy by displaying a signed photograph of Rita Renault, a famous movie star. Rita, accompanied by her jealous husband, Jack Shields, arrives in the town for a personal appearance. By chance, Jack discovers the photograph of Rita, presumably the property of Chester, and when he sees his wife kissing Chester, a running fight ensues.
Tina, who is from an aristocratic English family, believes in the new freedom for women and is an ardent follower of a group of pseudo-bohemians. While riding through the neighboring estate of John Humphries, a wealthy commoner resented by the Carteret family, she is retrieved from a fall by John and blames him for the accident. The following day, she invites him to dinner, pretending repentance, but taking pleasure in ridiculing his old-fashioned dignity.
Joe (Tearle) and Bessie (Ayres), living in sin and just scraping by. Bessie thinks Joe has stolen their meagre savings, so she leaves him and becomes a manicurist eventually marrying a wealthy man who turns out to be stingy and cruel. Joe saves heiress Marion (Mills) from drowning, makes good as a civil engineer and eventually marries her. Joe and Bessie meet again by chance and Joe, in helping her to keep her secret, incurs Marion's jealousy. Bessie, extorted by a former acquaintance in desperation, decides to tell everything to her husband. However, to aid Joe she accuses Wallace (Miljan), with whom Marion is preparing to go away. Finally, Joe and Marion are reconciled, but Bessie learns that the world never forgives a woman who sins even when she has reformed.
The story of an idle rich boy who joins the US Army's Rainbow Division and is sent to France to fight in World War I, becomes friends with two working class men, experiences the horrors of trench warfare, and finds love with a French girl.
Jimmy Clark, sightseeing in France with his friend Algy Baker, falls in love, at first sight, with Betty Perry at the railroad station. The destination for all: Switzerland. There, Jimmy is mistaken for an expert mountain climber, J.K. Roberts. Betty is introduced to Jimmy and believes him to be the champion.
A young man raised in the American South discovers he is an Indian prince whose throne was taken by usurpers.