Helene was perhaps an inch or two less in stature than her visitor, but what she lacked in height she more than made up in the supple erectness of her carriage and the vivid and extraordinary alertness of all her movements.
"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).