The Female of the Species (1916)

Gloria Marley rules as a queen in Bohemia by virtue of her undisputed talents as a sculptress, her beauty and her daring unconventionality. Carleton Condon, a man of wealth and position, while appreciating Gloria's many attractions and good-fellowship, resolves to break away from the Bohemian circle, marry, and settle down. He is in love with Marcia Dorn. The announcement of the forthcoming manage is a severe blow to Gloria, who determines by fair means or foul to win Carleton from his young wife. In this she is for a time unsuccessful. Business, however, calls Carleton to Arizona to look after his mining interests. This affords Gloria her long-looked-for opportunity, and, closing her studio, she starts for the West. Fate so ordains that at a small wayside station Carleton boards the train that is carrying Gloria on her quest. Carleton, unconscious of the intrigue, welcomes a familiar face from his home town. That night there is a confusion in train orders, and far out in the desert there is a head-on collision. Gloria escapes unhurt, but Carleton lays unconscious, badly wounded with a fracture of the skull. A chance misidentification classes Carleton and Gloria as man and wife, and Gloria devotes her life to nursing back to health a man who has lost his memory and is oblivious of his past. He imagines Gloria to be in reality his wife. For some time this illusion prevails, and as they are strangers in a strange land Gloria is in no fear of an awakening. But one day an old business friend arrives at the hotel and. puzzled by the failure of Carleton to recognize him, stumbles on to the plot, and, returning home, tells his story to Marcia. Marcia starts West and rejoins her husband, and a struggle for possession takes place between the two women and the unconscious Carleton. The wife wins, and as a surgical operation brings returning memory to the husband, Gloria tastes to the full the bitterness of defeat.