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118 ARIADNE.truth, higher or better than a toy tohim was incomprehensibleto this nature which had thepurity and the force of Electra and Antigone.In some way she had failed: that was all sheknew.With her he had heard only the nightingales.And in some strange, horrible way, the snakesand 'the apes had been stronger than she,andto him had been sweeter, and so had drawnhimback to themand hadleft her alone.That wasall she knew.With an intense pride she had an intensehumility. "He loved me once," she said; andthis seemed to her to be a wonder still so greatthatitexcusedinhim all later cruelty; and,likethe woman she once had pitied on the Maremmashore, she woulcl not have wished her woundsless deep,nor their pain less,nor their hideousnessless,because those wounds assured her he—had loved her once.Alas! even this poor and bitter consolationwas a self-deception. Even when he had laid hisroses on her knees and wooed her first, he hadnot loved her, not even with such love as that