User Reviews

A touching drama, staged with skill, acted with intelligence and photographed with clearness. Like many pictures from this house it carries with it a lesson which may well come home forcibly to any man who is drifting away from the wife of his youth under the spell of some later siren who is attracted by his money, or some other form of success. Here is a strong man who deliberately leaves his wife and lavishes affection and money upon a show girl. Then comes the separation, the settlement, the divorce, the marriage to the show girl— and lo, a sudden shift of scene, so sudden as to be almost a shock, and one sees the former wife entering the gate of their old home, as forlorn as the long deserted house itself. Ruin quickly follows through some manipulation of the stock market, and after a frenzied appeal to the men around him the man goes home, tells the story to his show girl wife and asks her to let him have the jewels he has lavished upon her to begin life anew. She refuses and haughtily departs, leaving him alone, ruined, disappointed, harassed. The scene changes and he, too, has gone back to the old home, seats himself in the old-fashioned rocker and falls asleep. The door swings open, the first wife appears, discovers him sleeping, draws her chair close beside him, takes his hand, and the picture ends with her soothing him that he may sleep. Further comment is unnecessary. The simple life story, strong in its simplicity and startling in its vivid presentation, has been told. Its lesson is obvious. - The Moving Picture World, November 27, 1909