mounted my
horse and rode upon the storm to you. You, oh, my sister, I now
conjure: that which lies in your power, bravely do it,--end the
misery of the Immortals!"

Bruennhilde speaks to her pityingly and gently; it is so long since
she emerged from the vapour-dimmed atmosphere of her heavenly home
that she receives no clear impression, she owns, of the affair
related to her; but: "What, pale sister, do you crave from me?"

"Upon your hand, the ring--that is the one! Listen to my counsel,
for Wotan's sake cast it from you!" "The ring? Cast it from me?"
"To the Rhine-daughters give it back!" "To the Rhine-daughters,
I, this ring? Siegfried's love-token? Are you mad?"

Bruennhilde is unshaken by Waltraute's insistence. Good or bad arguments
have nothing to do with the case, as it stands in her feeling.
Indignation possesses her at the bare notion of the exchange proposed
to her, out of all reason and proportion: Siegfried's love, of
which his ring is the symbol, for Walhalla's and the world's peace!
"Ha! do you know what the ring is to me? How should you grasp it,
unfeeling maid? More than the joys of Walhalla, more than the glory
of the Immortals, is to me this ring; one look at its clear gold,
one flash of its noble lustre, I prize more than the eternally
enduring joy of all the gods, for it is Siegfried's love which
beams at me from the ring! Oh, might I tell you the bliss.... And
that bliss is safeguarded by the ring. Return to the holy council
of the gods; inform them, concerning my ring: Love I will never
renounce; they shall never take love from me, not though Walhalla
the radiant should crash down in ruins!" When Waltraute with cries of
"Woe!" flees to horse, she looks after her unmoved: "Lightning-charged
cloud, borne by the wind, go your stormy way! Nevermore steer your
course toward me!" She has no regrets; the request has been in
her judgment so monstrous that it has hardened and shut her heart
toward those who made it. She gazes quietly over the landscape. Her
sense of security in Siegfried's love is no doubt at its firmest
in these moments following her fiery defence of it, her sacrifice
to it of old allegiances. The very peace of possession is upon
her.

Twilight has fallen; the guardian fire glows more brightly as the
darkness thickens. Of a sudden, the flames leap high,--Loge's signal
that some one draws near. At the same moment Siegfried's horn is
heard, approaching. With the cry: "In my god's ar