Harry Beecher calls on his fiancée, Eva Martin in an intoxicated state and she breaks the engagement. His mother, going to his room next morning, finds he has not been home all night and taking a photo of him from the desk compares it with one of his father. He returns to see this and she warns him he is following in his father’s footsteps. Impressed, he promises to reform and telling her of the broken engagement, asks her to intercede with Eva for him. She agrees. Eva, however, refuses to renew the engagement, though plainly very unhappy, Harry’s mother returns home. After she is gone, the girl thinks the matter over and writes a note to the mother saying she will marry Harry if his mother can truly believe she may trust her life’s happiness to him. On her return, Mrs. Beecher tells Harry and in disappointment he rushes off to drink. Then the note comes. The mother clutches at the chance held out by the girl and starts to write a note. But as she writes, memories of the past arise and she remembers the wretchedness of her own life with a drunken husband, and slowly she tears the note and flings it into the waste basket.