Although this expensive drama was "suggested by" a short story, The Laurels and the Lady, by Leonard Merrick, one can't help but think filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille would not be satisfied until he made it completely his own.
SPOILERS: After returning from World War I, Arthur Phelps (Conrad Nagel) meets Poll Patchouli, a cantina girl (Dorothy Dalton), in a Mexican border town. She falls in love with him and it pains her to see that he has become infatuated with another dancer, Rosa Duchene (Mildred Harris) he met earlier at a WWI hospital where he was recuperating from mustard gas exposure. He's so in love he writes unpublishable poetry. Phelps is later blinded more severely by an exploding cigar and Poll impersonates Rosa so he will marry her. A surgeon eventually restores his sight, and when he sees that he has wed Poll, he angrily leaves her in search of Rosa. Phelps goes halfway around the world and finds Rosa in Siam, where she has won the admiration of Prince Talaat-Noi (John Davidson). She callously tosses her glove into a pit of alligators and bids the man who really loves her to fetch it. The Prince dives in and is injured; Phelps saves him from being eaten. Both men realize that Rosa is faithless, and Phelps returns home to Poll.
SPOILERS: After returning from World War I, Arthur Phelps (Conrad Nagel) meets Poll Patchouli, a cantina girl (Dorothy Dalton), in a Mexican border town. She falls in love with him and it pains her to see that he has become infatuated with another dancer, Rosa Duchene (Mildred Harris) he met earlier at a WWI hospital where he was recuperating from mustard gas exposure. He's so in love he writes unpublishable poetry. Phelps is later blinded more severely by an exploding cigar and Poll impersonates Rosa so he will marry her. A surgeon eventually restores his sight, and when he sees that he has wed Poll, he angrily leaves her in search of Rosa. Phelps goes halfway around the world and finds Rosa in Siam, where she has won the admiration of Prince Talaat-Noi (John Davidson). She callously tosses her glove into a pit of alligators and bids the man who really loves her to fetch it. The Prince dives in and is injured; Phelps saves him from being eaten. Both men realize that Rosa is faithless, and Phelps returns home to Poll.