The Shadow of Her Past (1916)

Elayne Chalmers goes to Italy to finish her musical education, and there meets and falls in love with Peter Marsant, an artist. The girl's head is turned by the reception she gets from Italian nobility, and she casts Peter lightly aside to carry on a flirtation with a duke. The affair gets serious, and Elayne asks the duke to marry her, and he, laughing, says that wasn't at all what he meant. Peter and the duke fight a duel in which Peter is seriously wounded. Elayne, realizing her love for him, goes to the room where he lies unconscious, and nurses him back to health. Thus far the story runs along conventional lines, but it ends in a realistic manner; for these twain do not, as usual, "marry and live happily ever after," but are sundered by a sentiment forcibly and artistically depicted.