A weaker spirit would have succumbed to the temptation that was always at hand, for she was a very attractive girl. But she was resolved, with her indomitable grit, to keep herself pure. She turned away disdainfully from the leering old men, the callous young ones who accosted her as she paced the streets in her restless tramp for an honest living. Better the river than that!
After many vicissitudes, she came to anchor at last. She was then about twenty-two. She was very clever at educating herself. She had taught herself to sing, she had taught herself to play the piano, she had taught herself to dance.
She got an engagement at one of the minor halls in Paris to do a turn which combined singing and dancing. She was very pretty and attractive. In a small way she made a name. At the end of three months the manager trebled her salary.
To this minor music hall came one night the rich financier, a somewhat shady one, if the truth must be told, Monsieur Varenne, a man of about fifty-five who had never married.
He was greatly attracted by this elegant young girl. Her voice was small, her dancing was nothing great. But there was an indefinable charm about her that appealed to his somewhat jaded senses.
He obtained an introduction through the manager, who was only too anxious to oblige such a well-known personage. He invited her to supper. She accepted the invitation graciously, but coldly. Her coldness inflamed him the more.
When they met, he was surprised at her cleverness, the correctness with which she expressed herself. This was certainly no ordinary girl of the music halls.
“Tell me something about yourself, my dear,” he said, as they sat over their coffee. “I did not expect to find you such a charming companion.”
Valerie smiled a little bitterly. “I have not very much to tell. I expect my lot has been like that of many thousands in this delightful world. I am a child of the gutter. My father and mother beat and starved me, and sold me for a paltry sum to the proprietor of a travelling circus. It wasn’t exactly a rosy life then, but it was paradise to where I had been. He died; I was thrown on my beam ends. I can’t tell you what I have been through for the last few years. I couldn’t bear to talk of it—I have suffered everything that the poor have to suffer in such profusion—cold, hunger, the most absolute misery. And, at last,” she looked round at the luxurious appointments of the restaurant a little disdainfully, “I find myself in receipt of a decent salary, and the guest of a rich man who has pressed upon me every dainty. And I have so often wanted a meal!”
Varenne was a very kindly man, in spite of his somewhat sharp ways in business. Those last few pathetic words had gone straight to his heart. She had often wanted a meal, and she was a most attractive girl! Many would have called her beautiful.