It was perhaps the oldest of all stories.

He had heard it a hundred times before, but never had it left him quite so cold and pulseless as he was now.

And yet, even as the palace of the wonderful ideal he had builded crumbled about him in ruin, there rose up out of the dust of it a thing new-born and tangible for him.

Slowly his eyes turned to the beautiful head bowed in its attitude of prayer.

The blood began to surge back into his heart.