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After her brilliant career in Europe, Pola Negri, came to America to make films for Paramount. Her first few pictures for the studio were disappointing, so they imported Russian director Dmitri Buchowetzki to work with her again (the two had made films together overseas). Buchowetzki wrote the story for this drama, which was adapted to the screen by the talented Paul Bern. Cleo (Negri) lives in Marseilles and works as a waitress in a waterfront dive. A stranger entices her into coming to Paris to take dancing lessons, but instead she is taken to a baron (Edgar Norton), who betrays her. In spite of this inauspicious start, Cleo becomes a successful and renowned actress, but her feelings about men have never recovered. She loathes them and uses them only for the money they offer her, which she then hands over to a penniless girl. Georges Kleber (Robert W. Fraser) falls desperately in love with her and steals from the bank where he works because she demands money from him. When she hears that Kleber has been jailed, however, she goes to his employer, Henri Duval (Robert Edeson), in an attempt to get him released. Duval helps Kleber, and when he sees that Cleo really loves him, he releases her from her end of the bargain. Buchowetzki's career, unfortunately, never took off in America, and he died in the early days of the talkie era.