Jeanne Daniloff was reared in an atmosphere of mystery, intrigue and squalor. Her father was one of the many victims of Russian tyranny, and he had been forced to wander about Europe, going from one cheap boarding-house to another, accompanied by a wife who resented his lack of worldly success, and by a daughter who, as she grew older, rebelled against the squalid isolation of the life they were leading.
But Jeanne was not the sort of girl to accept her fate quietly. She had inherited her father's fanaticism, though she never applied it to political purposes, and also her mother's temper, and, becoming tired of the frequent quarrels between her parents, she eloped to Paris with an old gentleman. Jeanne was not sixteen, well developed, hardly a beauty, but possessed of a pair of remarkable eyes. She was well described later as "The woman with the fatal eyes." Jeanne was not destined to live many years, and yet during her brief career she hypnotized to their ruin three men, all of whom were, presumably, persons of education and position.
The ambitious, fiery-natured Russian girl meant to have a good time. Jeanne Daniloff was a curious mixture of pride and self-abasement. She hated poverty and she loved love. In her opinion the world ought to have been populated only by handsome men able to provide her with every luxury, with a sprinkling of women to flatter her by their jealousy. Warm-hearted and warm-blooded, reared in poverty and trouble, Jeanne Daniloff was born to play a tragic rôle on the stage of life.
Her first escapade did not last longer than six months and by the time her elderly friend had deserted her Jeanne was an orphan. At that moment her fate was trembling in the balance, and she might have been left in her loneliness to sink to the lowest depths had not her grandmother, who had always loved the reckless and irresponsible girl, offered her a home. Jeanne accepted, and went to live at Nice, encouraged, no doubt, by the knowledge that Nice had many carnivals, and was a resort of the rich.
Her grandmother, who kept a boarding-house, was soon cured of her delusion that Jeanne would help her in the conduct of her establishment. Household work was not to the liking of the young girl, who thought only of dresses and dances and men, and while the old lady was left to look after her boarders Jeanne spent the days reading novels and the nights dancing. She became a well-known figure at the numerous dancing halls in Nice, and most men forgot her rather plain features once they came under the spell of her "fatal eyes." Jeanne had only to look at a man to bring him to her feet. Once she realized her power she revelled in it, and, despite her aptitude for doing nothing, she managed to educate herself to hold her own in the best society, into which she sometimes strayed.
There is always at least one critical turning point in the careers of women of the Daniloff type, and Jeanne's came unexpectedly at a ball at Nice. She was chatting with a couple of friends between dances when the master of ceremonies begged to be allowed to present a newcomer to her. A few moments later Jeanne Daniloff was face to face with a tall, pale young man with a weak mouth and a nervous manner. Jeanne looked at him with her fatal eyes, and he was her slave.
Weiss was a lieutenant in the French Army, of good family, and with a future. In that crowd of adventurers and witlings he was a somebody, and when the following day he called on Jeanne at her grandmother's boarding-house he thrilled her with a proposal of marriage. It was not unexpected. Jeanne must have known that she had fascinated him, but she was nevertheless pleased at the prospect of becoming Madame Weiss, and in her usual manner she flung herself impetuously into the arms of her lover.
Her happiness was short-lived, however. Weiss's mother, when she heard of her son's intention, made it her business to interview Jeanne. Madame Weiss was not to be fascinated by the "fatal eyes," and she summed up the character of the boarding-house siren in terms that left no doubt in her son's mind that she would never consent to the union. As according to the law of France the young officer could not marry without his mother's permission the brief engagement between him and Jeanne came to an end.
The Russian girl quickly recovered her spirits and once again abandoned herself to the gaieties of Nice. The prospect of losing her turned Weiss's love into a burning passion. He attended balls just to catch a glimpse of her; and it maddened him to see her smiling into the faces of men he imagined to be his rivals. Daily he pestered his mother to give her consent, but she held out against him, and at last Weiss had to resort to desperate measures.
With his promotion to the rank of captain he received orders to go to Oran in Algiers. The night before he was due to leave Nice he sought out Jeanne and implored her to elope with him. Of course he was in complete ignorance of the fact that the girl had already had that "affair" with that elderly gentleman which had terminated in Paris. Young Weiss used all the eloquence of which he was capable, unable to realize that he was addressing one to whom elopement appealed irresistibly because it was an adventure.