She felt singularly tired when the long flank of Catharine de’ Medici’s part of the old palace came into view with the river sucking at the wall. All the surroundings were gray and motionless like a picture, and in the midst of this dead immobility the swift, turbulent tide rolled on, a thing of sinister life, calling to her as it sped. Midway across the bridge she stopped to look down on it, and then stood gazing, fascinated, unable to tear herself away. Close to her, on the coping of the wall, an image-seller had set out his wares. They were a dream of fair women, classic and modern. The solemn majesty of the great Venus was contrasted with Phryne hiding her eyes in a spasm of modesty. Clytie, with the perfect fall of her shoulders, rising from the lily leaves that fold back as if unwilling to hide so much beauty, stood droopingly beside the proud nakedness of Falguière’s Diane. The boy who presided over this gallery of loveliness--a meagre Italian, his face nipped with frost--stood a hunched-up, wretched figure, his eyes questioning the passers-by. Presently one of these halted in the hurrying march with an eye on Clytie. The boy drew his hands from his pockets, and with piteous eagerness held out the bust. The tones of his voice penetrated Celia’s dark musings, and she looked that way. The buyer was a lady, young, and of a curiously soft and silly prettiness. She displayed all of a Parisienne’s flawless finish. Her cheek, by art or nature, was like a magnolia petal; her hair showed burnished on its loose ripples. Beneath the edge of her veil her uncovered mouth appeared, fresh as a child’s, serious, and charmingly foolish. Her chin rested on a fluff of white tulle and was a white of a warmer tint. There was dubious debate in her glance as it paused on the figures. She looked the incarnation of sweet indecision. Presently she decided on Clytie, and said she would take it with her. Celia knew she had bought the head from a sudden, careless pity for the boy’s red nose and chilblains. If _she_ had peddled sketches on the bridge, with her nose red and her toes coming through her boots, she, too, would have made money, she thought, as she hungrily wondered how much the boy had made by his sale. The lady unclasped the little bag that hung by a chain to her wrist, and searched for money. She was evidently careless, and carried many things therein. Suddenly she jerked out a whisp of pocket-handkerchief, and under it found the _cache_ where the money had been secreted. She bent her face to search for the desired coin, and so did not see that with the handkerchief a five-franc piece had been twitched out.