Peyton Carothers and Margaret Grayton fancy themselves in love. Through reverses in fortune both are penniless and to these two, marriage without money is hopeless. The millionaire, Robert Van Allen, is deeply in love with Margaret and has asked her several times to become his wife. She and Carothers plan to attain their ends by making a fool of Van Allen. When he proposes marriage again, Margaret makes a cold-blooded proposition to marry him for the sum of one million dollars. Thinking he can gain her love after marriage, Van Allen agrees and gives her a promissory note to be paid following the ceremony. They are married, and Carothers, Van Allen’s false friend, officiates at the wedding as best man. Van Allen takes his bride to a beautiful country home he has had built for her reception and there, too, Carothers goes as a guest. He and Margaret plot to betray Van Allen. A few months pass with nothing serious happening except the bitter disappointment and heartache of Van Allen, he realizes that his bargain was indeed a cold-blooded proposition. He is called away to the city on a business appointment. He accidentally misses his train and he returns to his home to find Carothers and his wife in a love scene. From Margaret’s lips he overhears the bitter truth. Van Allen decides to teach the couple a lesson and acting on the theory that enforced familiarity breeds contempt, locks the two together with handcuffs and drives them before him under the lash of a whip to his lodge in a secluded and desolate spot in the mountains. The guilty pair are locked in a cabin, which is well stocked with food and there he leaves them to the consequences of their own wrong doing, while he sets up a camp outside to watch developments. The weeks pass none too pleasantly for the would-be lovers who find their love a bitter delusion and each other’s company a curse. With his wrist locked to that of the woman he has sworn to love, the caddishness of Carothers turns to savagery and he treats her brutally. One night Van Allen leaves the cabin door open and Carothers forces Margaret to steal away with him. Van Allen trails them. After an all-night walk they find themselves lost in the desert. Margaret is exhausted and unable to continue and drops to the baked earth. Van Allen is moved at the plight of the woman he loved and unlocks the handcuffs and gives her water. Carothers steals upon the millionaire, tears the revolver from his side and snatches Van Allen’s rifle. He tossed the revolver to Margaret and tells her to cover Van Allen with it. Then denouncing the millionaire as a fool and vowing he will kill him, Carothers aims the rifle but is shot himself by the woman he stole away. Unable to endure it any longer Margaret pleads to regain the love of her husband and there is a happy ending.