While Ann and the son of her boss are out on a ship beyond the 12-mile limit, which allows liquor to be consumed, the son, Frank makes unwanted advances towards her. While she is fighting him off, the ship is raided and the passengers herded ashore. Eighteen months later Ann is celebrating her one year anniversary to Lawrence Reagan when her young sister-in-law announces she is in love, and it turns out to be Frank. Ann decides to save her husband's sister from a fate worse than death, and goes to Frank's apartment to prevent an elopement. Lawrence also goes to the apartment that night, and everyone is entangled in a crime of passion.

Men and women, fathers and children. Ahmed, son of Diana and Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan, falls in love with Yasmin, a dancing girl who fronts her father's gang of mountebanks. Among the cutthroats is Ghobah, a villainous Moor to whom Yasmin is promised. In ruins near Touggourt, the city where Yasmin dances, she and Ahmed meet secretly until one night when her father and the gang capture the son of the sheik, torture him, and hold him for ransom. Will Ahmed believe that Yasmin set him up for capture? Even if true love finds a way through webs of deceit, what will the vigorous and imposing sheik say about his son consorting with a dancing girl?