A girl from Paris' underworld fights for love and survival during a time of international turmoil.
In contemporary France, Colette is the girlfriend of an Apache gang's leader. A wealthy artist visits a seedy bar in search of inspiration for his sketches, and he finds it in the tough girl's figure. While doing a sketch of her, her lover steals the artist's wallet, which contains no money, but there is a letter making an offer of 20,000 francs for a statue.
Colette and her lover go to the artist's home to steal the statue, but they are discovered, there is a fight, and the artist is getting the better of it. Colette garrotes him from the back, so that her lover escapes, but the artist subdues her, and keeps Colette a prisoner. He tells her unless she agrees to pose for him in the nude he will handle her over to the gendarmes, and she finally consents.
The gang leader send another girl, Cheron, to return the wallet, in order to find out what has become of Colette. She returns to the gang reporting that Colette was posing 'like the day she was born'. But that was all, as the artist treats Colette kindly, and takes no more advantage of her, and even tells her the story of Joan of Arc - as she models for him.
Colette stays in for the night, and the gang decrees that Colette must die for failure to return, and select her 'discarded' lover to be her executioner. He breaks in via the roof of the penthouse, and breaks her dream in which she is Joan of Arc. He tells her what has been decided about her, she fights back, and instead of an execution, it is a hard fight. The artist comes in and takes on the Apache leader again, enabling Colette to escape. Shortly afterwards, her Apache lover also escapes.
Colette goes straight to the Apache's den, seeks out Cheron, and there is a knife duel between them.
In the fall, the Kaiser's hordes knock at the gates of Paris, and the Apaches want to profit from the confusion to rob the people. The artist joins the resistance forces, but is captured by the Apaches when he tries to convince them to join the police against the invaders. Colette succeeds in helping a girl out of the clutches of a German officer, and killing him, then persuading the other Apaches to join the French forces. Once more a girl of the streets roused the French to victory.
