Walter Clark is engaged to his rich young cousin Beatrice Irving. While on a visit to a gypsy camp, he meets Tamandra, and it is love at first sight. He goes back alone and he and Tamandra run off and get married--she marrying him for his money. The young man and his gypsy wife are turned out of his uncle's house. After learning the truth of Walter being dependent on his uncle, Tamandra endures living in poor surroundings with him for one year; then she leaves him and rejoins her tribe. Walter visits the camp and tries to win her back, but is driven off. A child has been born to Tamandra, but she conceals it from him. Later, to keep Walter from annoying her, she has an article published of her death. The uncle reads this and visits his nephew and begs him to return. Back in his old home, Walter and Beatrice fall in love again. On the eve of their marriage, Oscar, a gypsy, asks the sexton about Walter's marriage. He tells Tamandra, who sends a note of congratulations to Walter, which he receives during the wedding ceremony. On receipt of it he deserts Beatrice and rushes off to a monastery. He is admitted and joins the order. There is another lapse of time. Beatrice, having felt the shock keenly, becomes a slum worker. One day while going her rounds, she accidentally meets Tamandra's child, who takes Beatrice to his mother's "poor one-room quarters." The mother dies and asks Beatrice to take care of the boy. She takes him home and the two become great chums. One day while they're playing together, a band of monks are out for a walk, and when they pass by, Beatrice notices Walter among them. She stops him and tells him about Tamandra's death and introduces the boy and relates the story of Tamandra and the boy's relationship. He realizes that it is his son; forgetting his garb, he hugs him. Beatrice asks him to return. He hesitates and declares his vows to the order and that he has already renounced the ways of the world, and telling Beatrice that she should raise the boy as hers. She consents just as the other monks pass, and Walter falls in with them and returns to the monastery.