Day Break (1913)

• 85%
• 1913
• Drama
• Travers Vale

A woman spy in the employ of a foreign government is ordered to get the plans of a fortification from a young lieutenant, and is threatened with death if she is not successful. She goes to the embassy ball and sees there her victim, the lieutenant who is intoxicated and lying across the table. She succeeds in getting the plans from his pocket and goes away. Arriving home she realizes by a movement of the curtain that the man who controls her life waits for the papers in the next room. As she starts to take them to him a letter falls to the floor from the envelope containing the plans. It is a letter from the lieutenant's mother expressing faith in his execution of his duty to his country, and she realizes what this will mean to the mother. She finally decides that she would rather have the son meet disgrace than herself meet death. In a reverie she has a vision of her own life starting when as a young girl she left home. The vision of her own mother causes her to decide to return the plans which she does. She then walks slowly into the room where death awaits her. A great struggle is apparent by the quivering of the curtain and in the last scene the man's foot is seen just going out of the window, while the woman lies in a huddled heap on the floor with a smile on her face.