te
tangle. The goaded woman bursts into a wild outcry, sharp as a
knife by which she should hope to cut through the coil in which
she is caught: "Deceit! Deceit! Dastardly deceit!... Treachery!
Treachery! such as never until this moment called for vengeance!"

Gutrune catches her breath: "Deceit?..." The quickly roused suspicion
of the crowd takes up Bruennhilde's word: "Treachery?... To whom?..."

"Holy gods! Heavenly leaders!" Bruennhilde's madness clamours to
heaven: "Did you appoint this in your councils? Do you impose upon
me sufferings such as never were suffered? Do you create ignominy
for me such as never was endured? Prompt me then to vengeance such
as never yet raged! Enkindle anger in me such as never was quelled!
Teach Bruennhilde to break her own heart that she may shatter the
one who betrayed her!" The ineffectual Gunther tries vainly to
hush her, to stop the scandalous scene. "Away!" she thrusts him
from her, "cheat!... Yourself cheated!" and she announces ringingly
to them all the one thing which in all this confusion she knows
to be true: "Not to him (Gunther) am I married, but to that man,
there!"

"Siegfried?... Gutrune's husband?" the murmur passes through the
astonished crowd.

"Love and delight he forced from me...." Her momentary hatred of
Siegfried thus distorts the image of the past. Siegfried's only
possible interpretation of this astonishing declaration is that
the Tarnhelm did not properly conceal his identity--but even so
the woman is not speaking the truth. What her purpose can be in
thus darkening her own fame he is at a loss to divine. He replies
to her charge directly, careless at this point that the plot between
Gunther and himself stands betrayed by his words. "Hear, whether I
have broken my faith! Blood-brotherhood I swore to Gunther: Nothung,
my worthy sword, guarded the vow of truth; its sharp blade divided
me from this unhappy woman!" Bruennhilde hears him with a jeer. They
are speaking at cross purposes; he, as it should be remembered,
of the foregoing night alone, while she speaks of that past so
wholly blotted from his mind. "Oh, wily hero! see how you lie!
how ill-advisedly you call to witness your sword! I am acquainted
indeed with its sharpness, but acquainted, too, with the sheath--in
which, pleasantly encased, Nothung, the faithful friend, hung against
the wall, while the master courted his dear!"

"How?... How?..." the agitated followers are beginning to ask. "Has