Back came the Queen’s armies in triumph with their allies, and the conquered territory was added as one more to the many that formed her realm. But the Queen sighed as she looked at the White King’s statue, and her triumph grew bitter to her. Day by day, as she looked at the calm marble face, her love for it increased, and she owned sadly to herself, “He whom I have conquered has conquered me!” Of the lost King himself no tidings could be learned, though search was made far and wide. Minstrels came to the court, and sang of his great deeds in fighting against odds, but of his end they sang variously. Some sang that he lay buried beneath the thickest of the slain; others that from his last battle he had been carried by good fairies, and that after he had been healed of his wounds, he would return in a hundred years and recover his kingdom. One minstrel came to stay at the court, who sang of ruined homes and wasted fields, and a happy land laid desolate, and how its King wandered friendless and unknown through the world, hiding himself in disguise, sometimes in the cottages of the poor, and sometimes in the dwellings of the rich. But from no one could the Queen learn any news that satisfied her, or gave hope that he would at last bend down his pride, and come and sue to her for forgiveness. Wishing to have a hiding place for her grief, she caused the statue to be set up in a green glade in the most lonely part of the gardens; and there often she would go and gaze on the calm noble face (whose closed eyes seemed even now to disdain her love), and would wonder how long a queen’s heart took to break. But after a time she thought, “Though I may never win the love of the White King for my own, is there no way by which my passion can assuage itself, when by lifting my finger I can summon half fairyland to my aid?” So she called to her the most powerful Fairy she knew, and taking her into the green glade, began sighing and weeping in front of the White King’s statue. “This,” she said, “is the image of the only man on earth I can love! But the man himself is lost, gone I know not where; and my heart is breaking for grief! Give this statue a life and a heart, and teach it to love me, else soon I shall surely be dead!” The Fairy said to her, “All the might of fairyland could not do so much; but a little of it I can do; and if Fate is kind to you, Fate may bring the rest of it to pass.” “How much can you do?” asked the Queen. “This only,” said the Fairy, “but even that you must do for yourself: I can but show you the way. Stone is stone, and out of stone I cannot make a heart; but a heart may grow into it, and this is the way to compass it.