Sister to Judas

Annie Frayne, a reader at the Rogers Publishing Company, impresses her boss, Bruce Rogers, by her argument that the company should not publish the "trashy" novel In Quest of a Virgin because of the damage it could do to their reputation. Rogers decides to promote Annie to be his assistant. However, when Rogers comes to her home and sees her squalid surroundings, her slatternly mother and two disreputable brothers, Percy and Elmer, he questions whether he has chosen the right person. Dejected, Annie tries to drown herself, but she is rescued by Ronnie Ross, a former newspaper reporter. While police officer Mike O'Flannigan goes to get a doctor and a pulmotor, Ronnie takes Annie to his house, where he lives with his wheelchair-bound mother. The next day, when Annie awakens, she is angry that Ronnie saved her. Ronnie's mother then inspires Annie by relating that after she was told that she would never walk again, she learned that life could be just as beautiful as one cares to make it. Annie and Ronnie soon marry, and as a wedding gift, he presents her with his recently published first novel, which turns out to be In Quest of a Virgin . After their honeymoon, Annie learns that Rogers has been trying to locate her to offer her the assistant job. Annie goes to see Rogers, and after they apologize to each other, she confides that Ronnie is falling under the influence of her crooked brothers and has stopped writing. Rogers tells her that there will always be a place for her with the company. Elmer convinces Ronnie to bet $1,000 on a "tip" in the Kentucky Derby. Ronnie gives the money to Elmer and Percy to bet, and when the horse comes in last, the two brothers split the money between them. Annie then decides that she must return to work. Ronnie suspects that Rogers is trying to seduce her, and Elmer and Percy further inflame Ronnie's suspicions about Rogers. One evening, Rogers asks Annie to come to his home to help him catalog some rare books. Ronnie goes drinking in a speakeasy with the brothers, then drunkenly confronts Rogers and Annie at his home. When he insinuates that Annie and Rogers are lovers, Rogers hits him. Rogers then admits that he loves Annie, but not in the "vile" manner that Ronnie suspects. Ronnie does not return to live with Annie, and sometime later, Mike, who is now a detective, arrives at Annie's home with a warrant for Ronnie's arrest for a jewelry heist. Although Ronnie has returned to hide, Annie gives him up and asks the court to imprison him to cure him of his criminal tendencies. Annie visits Ronnie in jail and tells him that she still loves him, but he accuses her of loving Rogers and tells her that he wants a divorce, calling her a "sister of Judas." Over the next year, Ronnie refuses to answer her letters. Rogers reveals that he took up the case with the parole board and that Ronnie was released two months ago. When he reminds her of the struggle he has had to keep his thoughts about her to himself, she says she would appreciate it if he had not bring the subject up. After she gets a Reno divorce, she agrees to marry Rogers, but in his library before the wedding, she receives Ronnie's new novel Cry of the Soul , acclaimed as one of the best in years. When she notices the touching inscription to her, Annie begins to cry, and seeing this, Rogers goes to Ronnie, who is waiting ouside the library, and puts his flower in Ronnie's lapel, shakes his hand and says that she is waiting for him. Rogers sees the reconciled couple kiss and then sends the minister into the library to re-marry them.