Jack Rogers and his wife, Ethel, are happy on their first wedding anniversary. Jack is a successful architect in partnership with his father, while Ethel seeks amusement as an amateur sculptress. Diggs, an unscrupulous competitor of Jack and his father, schemes with his dissolute nephew, Guy Denton, to prevent Jack from winning a $5,000 prize the city has offered for a public arch design. Guy well known as a social lion, succeeds in luring Jack away from his home at evenings, causing him to neglect his work and to create misunderstandings between himself and Ethel. Ethel has just completed a bust typifying "Fashion." Her society friends urge her to live up to her ideals and embrace the social life. More as a rebuke to Jack than anything else, Ethel plunges into gaiety. In doing so, she meets Guy, who steadily cultivates acquaintanceship with her. Through Ethel's friendship he gains access to her home, finds a completed arch design in Jack's desk, which he had prepared, and destroys it by spilling ink on it. With the simultaneous discovery of his ruined design and Ethel's intimacy with Guy, the breach between the young married couple widens. Jack forbids Guy from entering his home again and with the end of the arch competition only forty-eight hours distant, he starts to work on a new design. Downstairs Ethel sulks in the living room. Not even the presence in the home of the housekeeper's seven-year-old daughter has awakened in Ethel the desire for children. As she sits brooding over her imagined wrongs, Ethel encounters a passage in a book marked by Jack, "Call not the man wretched who, whatever has he suffers, has a child to love." With her husband's longing for fatherhood thus freshly revealed Ethel falls asleep in the chair. In her dream she sees herself given over to Guy while her husband, now a ruined man, can only look on in mute anguish. She sees a horde of bright-faced children, led by Nell, swarm down stairs. They have possessed themselves of her gowns and finery, beseeching her to sacrifice Guy and the finery for Jack's sake. In her vision she is approached by Nell, who bears in her arms the design that fate willed to win the prize that would make Jack famous. Nell offers to give her this design if she will sacrifice the finery for the sake of Jack. Ethel at first angrily refuses. Jack enters, furious at finding Guy in the room with Ethel. The men struggle and Jack is killed by Guy. Ethel, in her anguish, now turns appealingly to the kiddies, repeating her ardent desire that they take the finery and give Jack back to her. She sees Guy standing sneeringly at her shoulder and she flies at him in a fury. She awakens to find she has seized her sculptured work "Fashion," and dashes it to the floor. Jack, hearing the crash, hastens from his work into the room. Gladdened at his appearance his repentant wife tells the story of the dream. Unobserved, little Nell creeps to them, and is received with open arms by Ethel. She then tells Jack of the successful design, as seen by her in the vision. Later he wins the prize and a happy future with Ethel, who is now made joyful by the thought of approaching motherhood.