blend and become one.

Alice would have preferred something less ethereal, for the exigencies
of the situation demanded that the King should get out of the window and
claim the hand of the beggar-maid in the public street. But the nun who
had composed the music could not be brought to see this, and, after a
comic scene between the Queen and the Chancellor, the King, followed by
his Court and suite, entered, leading the beggar-maid by the hand. In a
short speech he told how her sweetness, her devotion, and, above all,
her beautiful voice, had won his heart, and that he intended to make her
his Queen. A back cloth went up, and it disclosed a double throne, and
as the young bride ascended the steps to take her place by the side of
her royal husband, a joyful chorus was sung, in which allusion was made
to a long reign and happy days.

Everyone was enchanted but Alice, who had wished to show how a man, in
the trouble and bitterness of life, must yearn for the consoling
sympathy of a woman, and how he may find the dove his heart is sighing
for in the lowliest bracken; and, having found her, and having
recognized that she is the one, he should place her in his bosom,
confident that her plumes are as fair and immaculate as those that
glitter in the sunlight about the steps and terraces of the palace.
Instead of this, she had seen a King who seemed to regard life as a
sensual gratification; and a beggar-maid, who looked upon her lover, not
timidly, as a new-born flower upon the sun, but as a clever huckstress
at a customer who had bought her goods at her valuing. But the audience
did not see below the surface, and, in answer to clapping of hands and
cries of _Encore_, the curtain was raised once more, and King Cophetua,
seated on his throne by the side of his beggar-maid, was shown to them
again.