Jerry Wendover, disfigured since childhood after his act of heroism in saving a little girl from a fire scarred his face, secludes himself in an old house in the Backwater district of Florida. One night he finds Barbara Seaforth, a young blind girl, lost in the swamps and takes her home. The two unfortunates fall in love, marry, and have a child. One day, a visiting doctor tells Jerry that Barbara's sight can be restored. The operation is performed successfully, but the doctor warns his patient to shield her eyes from the light or risk reversal of the surgery. Barbara, realizing her husband's dread of exposing his disfigurement to her, looks at her child and then permanently blinds herself by staring into the light, thus sacrificing her sight for the love of her husband.

While visiting Atlanta, pampered Northern heiress Olive Thurston meets and marries Southerner John Ames, a member of an impoverished but old aristocratic family. John attempts to force his wife to conform to Southern ideals of womanhood, resulting in many conflicts between the newlyweds, but after a brief separation, Olive and John are reunited, resolving to look for each other's virtues and forgive the faults.

During World War I, young Dorothy Grant comes home from finishing school and informs her parents that she is going to contribute to the war effort by organizing a "Girls Aviation Corps". She has uniforms made and hires a veteran of the Spanish-American War to teach her "cadets" military routines and drills. Her father owns a munitions factory and is always telling her to be on the lookout for spies. She convinces herself that the family butler, Williams, is a spy because he cuts his grapefruit in an odd way. It turns out that Williams isn't a spy but the people whom Dorothy least suspects are in fact spies, and they discover that Dorothy knows the password to get into the factory after hours.

An Englishman who has made his fortune in America decides to return to England.

Sato (Sessue Hayakawa) faithfully works for importer James Thornton (James Neill). When the old man dies, he leaves his daughter Mildred (Vivian Martin) in Sato's care. Sato loves the girl, but as he is Japanese he cannot hope to ever marry her (at least not in the racially prejudiced era of the early 1900s). Besides, Mildred loves Harry Maxwell (Tom Forman), who was raised alongside her.

Since she is an only child, Becky Knight (Vivian Martin) is a bit spoiled by her parents (P.H. Sosso and Alice Knowland), who run a general store. They somehow manage to save up enough money to send Becky away to boarding school. The other girls come from very wealthy families and Becky allows them to believe that she comes from a rich family, too. One of her classmates invites her to her home, where she meets Tom Fielding (Jack Holt), a young doctor. He falls in love with Becky, and she never gets the opportunity to tell him the truth about her background.

Jimmie Dexter is on his way to college when his mother discovers that her stocks have stopped paying dividends. Jean Hilton, who has always loved Jimmie, offers to secretly stake him using her own inheritance. So Jimmie goes off to college, none the wiser, and gets tangled up with vampy cabaret singer Diana Parish.

A Union officer exposes the several deceptions his sweetheart has been engaging in. These include , spying for the Confederacy, and posing as a boy in order to comfort her aging and wealthy uncle who has no heir.

Nell, a beautiful mountain girl, is a member of the Serviss family, rivals of the neighboring Rutherford family. Nell is engaged to Jim Serviss, who is the head of their clan, but when, by accident, she meets a stranger who has come to stay with the Rutherfords, they become infatuated.

Giles Bateson gets expelled from college for misconduct. His angry father, the Earl, sends him a message: "Never let me see you again until you have earned a half crown and proven yourself worthy of confidence."