Edith Hardy (Fannie Ward) is a venal spoiled society woman who continues to buy expensive clothes even when her stockbroker husband, Richard Hardy (Jack Dean), tells her all his money is sunk into a stock speculation and he can't pay her bills until the stock goes up. She even delays paying her maid her wages, and the embarrassed Richard must do so. Edith is also the treasurer of the local Red Cross fund drive for Belgian refugees, which holds a gala dance at the home of Haka Arakau (Sessue Hayakawa), a rich Burmese ivory merchant. He is an elegant, dangerously sexy man, to whom Edith seems somewhat drawn. He shows her his roomful of treasures, and stamps one of them with a heated brand to show that it belongs to him.

A society friend of the Hardy's tells Edith that Richard's speculation will not be profitable and he knows a better one, and offers to double her money in one day if she gives it to him to invest in the suggested enterprise. Edith, wanting to live lavishly and unwilling to wait for Richard to realize his speculation, takes the $10,000 the Red Cross has raised from her bedroom safe and gives it to the society friend.

The next day, however, her horrified friend tells Edith his tip was worthless and her money is completely lost. The Red Cross ladies have scheduled the handover of the money to the refugee fund for the day after that. Edith goes to Arakau to beg for a loan, and he agrees to write her a check in return for her sexual favors the next day. She reluctantly agrees to this, takes his check and is able to give the money to the Red Cross. Then Richard announces elatedly that his investments have paid off and they are very rich. Edith asks him for $10,000, saying it is for a bridge debt, and he writes her a check for the amount with no disapproval.

Edith takes it to Arakau, but he says she can't buy her way out of their bargain. She struggles against his advances. He takes his heated brand used to mark his possessions and brands her with it on the shoulder. In their struggle, Edith finds a gun and shoots him. She runs away just as Richard bursts into the house. He finds the check he wrote to his wife. Arakau is only wounded in the shoulder, not killed. His servants call the police, Richard declares that he shot him, and Arakau does not dispute this.

Edith pleads with Arakau not to press charges, but he refuses to spare Richard. She visits Richard in his jail cell and confesses everything, and he orders her not to tell anyone else and let him take the blame. At the crowded trial, both he and Arakau testify that Richard was the shooter. The jury finds Richard guilty.

This is too much for Edith, and she rushes to the witness stand and shouts that she shot Arakau "and this is my defense". She bares her shoulder and shows everyone in the courtroom the brand on her shoulder. The male spectators are infuriated and rush to the front, clearly intending to lynch Arakau. The judge sets aside the verdict, and the prosecutor withdraws the charges. Richard lovingly and protectively leads the chastened Edith from the courtroom.

A 1915 American Black & White silent drama film directed by Cecil B. DeMille, produced by DeMille and Jesse L. Lasky, written by Hector Turnbull and Jeanie MacPherson, cinematography by Alvin Wyckoff, starring Fannie Ward, Sessue Hayakawa, Jack Dean, James Neill, Yutaka Abe, Dana Ong, Hazel Childers, Arthur H. Williams, and Lucien Littlefield.

Jack Dean and Fannie Ward were real-life husband and wife.

Because of a protest from the Japanese Association of Southern California, Sessue Hayakawa's name and nationality was changed for the 1918 re-release from Hishuru Tori to a Burmese, Haka Arakau.

The film was remade in 1923, with George Fitzmaurice as director and Pola Negri and Jack Holt starring. In 1931, Paramount remade it again, with Broadway mogul George Abbott as director and starring Tallulah Bankhead. This was also remade in France as Marcel L'Herbier's "Forfaiture" (1937) with Hayakawa cast once again as the sexually predatory Asian man.

An operatic adaptation of the story, "La Forfaiture", with music by Camille Erlanger and a libretto by André de Lorde and Paul Milliet, premiered at the Opéra-Comique in 1921, unsuccessfully, playing only three times.

This film was originally banned in Australia and Great Britain, for fear that its blatant racism would offend Japan, and was nominated for the American Film Institute's 2001 list AFI's "100 Years...100 Thrills", and the 2007 AFI's "100 Years...100 Movies" list. In 1993, the film was selected for preservation in the U. S. National Film Registry.

This is a lurid melodrama, filled with sex, race, and sadism, and is one of the best films of its year. A great, straight up entry into silent films about domestic upper class problems, and therefore without historical or exotic quirks that would otherwise dominate. This brilliant early Cecil B. De Mille period piece is entertaining and well worth watching for Sessue Hayakawa.