Margery Huntley, an orphan alone in New York, employed at a dressmaking establishment, is sent by the forewoman to match a sample of lace for a gown. While at the lace counter, standing side by side with Helen North, a wealthy girl who is a kleptomaniac, a piece of very expensive lace is stolen by Helen and missed before she can get away. In a panic at the thought of detection, Helen slips the lace into Margery's handbag, which is open without Margery knowing it. The fact that the stolen goods are found on Margery causes her to be sent to prison. In the meanwhile Helen goes abroad with her invalid father. Margery serves her full term in prison, and on her release is befriended by the "Prison Angel," a kindly Salvation Army woman who hears the girl's story, believes in her and gives her a chance to be trained as a nurse. Margery graduates and is happy in her work, when the detective who arrested her, while visiting the hospital, recognizes her and tells one of the nurses that she has a prison record. Margery, realizing that her usefulness in that particular field is over, asks the doctor to send her abroad to nurse the wounded in Belgium. Through the war Helen's father loses all his money and dies suddenly in Belgium. Helen is left practically penniless. Her only hope is that she may hear from her father's old friend, a wealthy Mrs. Franklyn, of California, to whom her father had written, begging her to help his daughter. Mrs. Franklyn has never seen Helen, but generously sends her money and a steamer ticket and urges her to join her as quickly as possible. Helen starts on her journey, but is compelled to wait, and suffers the delays and hardships common to all the refugees at that time. Margery has Belgium reached and is working in a Red Cross Emergency Hospital. Helen and other refugees are driven from the refugee camp by the appearance of two hostile airships. Helen, panic-stricken, runs so far that she is lost and exhausted, and is brought to the Emergency Hospital. Margery recognizes her, but Helen doesn't recognize Margery. Helen tells Margery her story, displaying her steamer ticket and asking how she may continue on her journey. Margery tells Helen, "I am the girl you sent to prison." A shell strikes the Emergency Hospital and Helen is severely wounded and left for dead The enemy captures the town and Margery is left alone with those of the wounded who couldn't be moved. While arranging Helen's dress and papers, she is struck by their similarity of age and height, and notes the fact that Mrs. Franklyn has never seen Helen. She yields to the temptation to take this chance Fate has put in her way and determines to go to California as Helen North. She leaves the Emergency Hospital in the company of Dr. Richard Carlton, a young American Red Cross surgeon, serving with the enemy who has been so badly wounded that he is invalided home. After Margery's departure, the German surgeon discovers that Helen is not dead, but suffering from a depressed fracture of the skull. He operates and restores her to health. In the meantime Margery has been successful in establishing herself as Helen North. Mrs. Franklyn has become very fond of her and Dr Carlton is deeply in love with her and wishes to marry her. The real Helen North makes her escape and comes to claim her own. At first Margery only begs to be allowed to go away quietly, but the other woman is so vindictive and so forgetful of the part she played in robbing Margery of her good name, that Margery, angry, determines to deny the truth. She succeeds in this up to the last moment and then overcome by the thought that she is condemning this girl to lifelong imprisonment in an insane asylum, and that she herself has gained Dr. Carlton's love under false pretenses, makes full confession, only to find that the doctor loves her in spite of everything.