tures, 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.

But enough of intolerable theory.

Instinctively the Lady Ysolinde spoke to our maid of the Red Tower in a
manner and tone very different from that which I had ever before heard
her employ, at once more equal and more guarded.

"I was told by Master Hugo Gottfried here (whose acquaintance I made at
my father's house on the day after his foolish boy's prank of the White
Swan) that in the Red Tower of the Wolfsberg dwelt one of mine own age,
like myself a maid solitary among men. So to-day I have come to solicit
her acquaintance, and to ask her to be kind to me, who have ever been in
this city and country as a stranger in a strange land."

It was prettily enoug