While the master was speaking, the king was announced. Irma hurriedly spread a damp cloth over her clay model.
The king entered. He was unattended, and begged Irma not to allow herself to be disturbed in her work. Without looking up, she went on with her modeling. The king was earnest in his praise of the master's work.
"The grandeur that dwells in this figure will show posterity what our days have beheld. I am proud of such contemporaries."
Irma felt that the words applied to her as well. Her heart throbbed. The plaster of Paris which stood before her suddenly seemed to gaze at her with a strange expression.
"I should like to compare the finished work with the first models," said the king to the artist.
"I regret that the experimental models are in my small atelier. Does Your Majesty wish me to have them brought here?"
"If you will be good enough to do so."
The master left. The king and Irma were alone. With rapid steps, he mounted the ladder and exclaimed, in a tremulous voice:
"I ascend into heaven--I ascend to you. Irma, I kiss you, I kiss your image, and may this kiss forever rest upon those lips, enduring beyond all time. I kiss thee, with the kiss of eternity."
He stood aloft and kissed the lips of the statue. Irma could not help looking up, and, just at that moment, a slanting sunbeam fell on the king and on the face of the marble figure, making it glow as if with life.