Martha Queed joins her lover Arnold Barry, who is vacationing in the mountains, and feigns a sprained ankle to see the inside of his cabin. They are noticed by David Boyd, a drunken-ruffian relative of the Queeds, who informs her domineering and puritanical father, Marvin, who forces Martha to marry Arnold to save the family's reputation. When David is found dead the next morning, evidence points to Arnold as the murderer. Martha disappears and is later discovered in a state of delirium by a deformed boy named Atlas. Upon hearing that Arnold is to be sentenced, Atlas rushes to the courtroom and confesses to the murder, then commits suicide. While Martha is convalescing, she and Arnold are married in the presence of her mother, who has left the cruel Marvin.