When Men Desire

After his beloved daughter leaves for the city to pay off his debt, an old farmer goes mad when her letters become less frequent and it is suspected she may be using her body to get the money.

Mary Boyne, who made shirts at four dollars a week, had no place for love in her life - only despair and hate for the son of the man who had plunged her family into deepest distress. Peter Kenwitz loved Mary, but because he was a mathematician and a pessimist by trade, his love was as hopeless as her chance for happiness.

Albert Jordan, publishing house manager, lavishes his salary on his adored wife, Rita, and little daughter Edna. She is a churchgoing woman, while his home and his family is his religion. While returning home one day, Jordan sees his little daughter in the path of an auto. He runs to snatch her from instant death. He saves her but is seriously injured himself.

John Hampstead gives up his career as an actor and his actress sweetheart, Marian Dounay, to become a minister in a western town. Marian appears, and failing to win him back she tries to ruin his reputation. Hampstead is accused of stealing some jewelry though actually he is protecting the scapegrace brother of his current sweetheart, Bessie.

Betsy Thorne (Bennett) travels to investigate a missing man where she overhears a conversation between the sheriff and an imported detective that reporters are barred from the house and grounds where the mystery has taken place. She comes across a maid sent to the house from Richmond, and so frightens her that she gains a chance to act in her place. During the first night at the house she is terrified when she sees a ghostly figure come from the grand organ. The house is roused by her screams as she flees the room, and she is forbidden from going back there by the sister of the missing man. During the following night she is locked in her room during a thunderstorm, and while escaping through a window sees the ghostly figure again in the family graveyard. She makes an investigation which starts from a particular chord played at the grand organ. They find that certain keys cause a secret door in the organ to open, revealing a secret passage to a family tomb.

To receive the $5,000 promised in her Uncle Stephen's will, Dulcie Culpepper must live with her Uncle John in New York for six months so that her father, a Confederate colonel, will be reconciled with his brother whose marriage to a Northern woman long ago caused a breach.

A son tries to overturn the disgrace of his father, who committed suicide.

Therese Roger, daughter of a West Indian planter, whose parents are murdered while she is a baby, becomes the adopted daughter of her aunt, Madame Roger, keeper of a haberdashery shop in one of the smaller villages in southern France. She grows up with Camille, Madame Roger's son, a sickly, sexless creature, whom she ultimately marries in deference to her aunt's wishes.

At a party thrown by millionaire Max Goldberg, Charles Howard, an aristocratic young artist, succumbs to the charms of chorus girl Lita O'Farrell, Goldberg's erstwhile girl friend. After a whirlwind courtship, the two marry and then their incompatibilities begin to surface.

Jan Saxe and Peter Harlingen, two young men from Holland, arrive in America with little orphan Bertha Kruger whom they have befriended during the trip and whom they both love. Bertha has come to live with her blind Aunt Sophie, and when Jan secretly raises $500 for an operation to restore her aunt's sight, Bertha marries Peter, believing that he was the donor of the "secret gift."