“Lady Ysolinde,” said I, as they met with the mutually level eyeshot of women who measure one another, “this is Helene—­whom, for love and kindliness, we of the Wolfsberg call the ‘Little Playmate.’”

The daughter of Master Gerard impetuously threw back the gray monk’s hood which shrouded the masses of her tawny hair.  She put out both hands to Helene, held her a moment at arm’s-length to look into her eyes, even as she had done with me, but in a different way.  Then, drawing her nearer, she leaned forward and kissed her on the brow and on both cheeks.

Now I am not ordinarily a close observer, and many things, specially things that pertain to the acts of women, pass by me unnoticed.  But I saw in a moment that there was not, and never could be, more than the semblance of cordial amity between these two women.

I noted the Little Playmate instinctively quiver like a taken bird when she was thus embraced.  It was, I think, the undying antipathy of Eve for Lilith, a hatred which is mostly on the side of Eve, the Mother-Woman—­its place being taken by sharper and more dangerous envy in the breast of Lilith-without-the wall.

There, face to face, stood the two women who were to make my life, ruling it between them, as it were, striking it out between the impact of their natures, as underneath the blows of two smiths upon the ringing anvil the iron, hissing hot, becomes a sword or a ploughshare.

It was impossible to avoid contrasting them.

Helene, of a bodily beauty infinitely more full of temptation, bloomful with radiant health, the blush of youth and conscious loveliness upon her lips and looking out under the crisp entanglement of her hair, all simple purity and straightness of soul in the fearless innocency of her eyes; the Lady Ysolinde, deeper taught in the mysteries of existence, more conscious of power, not so beautiful, but oftentimes giving the impression of beauty more strongly than her fairer rival, compact of swift delicate graces, half feline, half feminine (if these two be not the same).  All these passed like clouds over the unquiet sea of her nature, reflecting the changing skies of circumstance, and were fitted to produce a fascination ever on the verge of repulsion even when it was strongest.  Ysolinde was the more ready of speech, but her words were touched constantly with dainty malice and clawed with subtlest spite.  She catspawed with men and things, often setting the hidden spur under the velvet foot deeply into the very cheek which she seemed to caress.  Such as I read them then, and largely as even now I understand them, were the two women who moulded between them my life’s history.

I suppose it is because I am of this Baltic North that I must need think things round and round, and prose of reasons and explanations—­even when I write concerning beautiful maids—­forever dreaming and dividing, instead of going straight, sword in hand, for their hearts, as is the way of the folk from the English land over-seas, or, more simply still, lying about their favors, which, I hear, is mostly the Frenchman’s way.