uaded
by the black brother; his regret at losing Freia is so great, he
tells the gods, that the treasure, if she is to be relinquished,
will have to be piled so high as completely to hide the blooming
maid.

"Let it be measured according to Freia's stature!" decrees Wotan,
and the giants drive their great staves into the earth so that
they roughly frame the figure of Freia. Helped by Loge and Froh,
they begin stopping the space between with the treasure. Wotan's
fastidiousness cannot endure the visible sordid details of his
bargain; he turns from the sight of the incarnate rose, as she
stands drooping in a noble shame, to be valued against so much
gold. "Hasten with the work!" he bids them, "it sorely goes against
me!" When Fafner's rough greed orders the measure to be more solidly
pressed down, and he ducks spying for crevices still to be stopped
with gold, Wotan turns away, soul-sick: "Humiliation burns deep
in my breast!"

The Hort is exhausted, when Fafner looking for crannies exclaims,
"I can still see the shining of her hair," and demands, to shut
it from view, the Tarnhelm which Loge has attempted to retain.
"Let it go!" commands Wotan, when Loge hesitates.

The affair, it now would seem, must be closed; but Fasolt, in his
grief over the loss of the Fair one, still hovers about, peering
if perchance he may still see her, and so he catches through the
screen of gold the gleam of her eye, and declares that so long
as the lovely glance is visible he will not renounce the woman.

"But can you not see, there is no more gold?" remonstrates Loge.
Fafner, who has not failed to store in his brain what he earlier
overheard, replies, "Nothing of the kind. There is a gold ring
still on Wotan's finger. Give us that to stop the cranny."

"This ring?..." cries Wotan, like Alberich before him.

"Be advised," Loge says to the giants, as if in confidence. "That
ring belongs to the Rhine-maidens. Wotan intends to return it to
them."

But Wotan has no subterfuges or indirections of his own--not conscious
ones; when he needs their aid, he uses another, as he had told
Fricka. "What are you prating?" he corrects Loge; "what I have
obtained with such difficulty, I shall keep without compunction
for myself." Loge amuses himself with probing further the grained
spot in his superior. "My promise then stands in bad case, which I
made to the Rhine-daughters when they turned to me in their trouble."
Wotan, with the coldness of the