As described in a film magazine,[4] jealous husband Louis Floriot (Courtleigh), refusing to forgive his wife Jacqueline (Frederick) for fleeing from his wrath and living with the friend who presses his attentions on her, forces her into the life of a derelict.

Laroque (Ainsworth), a crook who aids her in her return to France, learns that she is married to a man of wealth, and tries, with the help of his two associates M. Robert Parissard (Belmore) and M. Merival (Louis), to get possession of a fortune that rightfully belonged to Jacqueline.

Refusing to confer with her counsel and preferring death to freedom, during the course of the trial she receives the shocking revelation that the defendant attorney is her son Raymond (Ferguson).

In the first place, he ensures that every minute detail of French life, the diplomat’s mansion, the shoddy apartment where Madame X (Pauline Frederick) resides, the Hall of Justice, is perfection itself.

Instead of being a novelette, the film is the equivalent of a Zola novel...In the silent period, only Erich von Stroheim’s Greed (1924) surpassed the physical detail of this creation.”[7]