Stepan, a Russian peasant, is sent to Siberia for allegedly insulting the Grand Duchess Tatiana.

Seven years later, upon his release, he joins the Bolsheviks who are plotting to execute the imperial family.  Ivan, formerly his tutor as well as that of the royal family, persuades him to flee to America with Tatiana, now a beautiful young lady; though reluctant, he is at last won over by her beauty.  Although she does not love the lowborn Stepan, Tatiana follows, and they settle in New Jersey as husband and wife.

Clerking in a store, she tells stories to neighborhood children of the experiences of a princess, matching her story with facts of her early life; Stepan, realizing his inequality, pledges to return her to Russia.

There he finds diplomatic agents eager for information of the supposedly massacred royal family, but Tatiana, having become a mother, enters Russia with her child, disclaims her royal birth, and is happily reunited with Stepan.