termined cheerfulness, his pitiful
sick-nurse encouragements to Tristan.

Brangaene has reached Isolde and is making frightened efforts to
restore her. Mark stands regarding the still forms with profound
emotion. Reproach is in his tone when he now speaks, as earlier,
the gentle complainingness of one in all things blameless, who,
doing all for the best, has met with unmerited suffering. "Dead!
All dead!" he mourns, "My hero! My Tristan! Most tenderly-beloved
friend! To-day again must you betray your friend, to-day when he
comes to give you proof of highest faith. Awake! Awake at the voice
of my sorrow, O faithless, faithfullest friend!"

Brangaene's ministrations have brought back a little life to Isolde.
Brangaene holds her in her arms and labours to reassure her. "Hear
me, sweetest lady, happy news let me report. Would you not trust
Brangaene? For her blind fault she has made amends. When you
disappeared, quickly she sought the King. No sooner had the secret
of the potion been made known to him than in all haste he put to
sea, to overtake you, to renounce you, to lead you himself to the
friend!" Mark completes the revelation: "When I was brought to
understand what before I could not grasp, how happy was I to find
my friend free from blame! To wed you to the peerless hero with
full sails I flew in your wake,--but how does ravaging misfortune
overtake him who came bringing peace! I but made greater the harvest
of death! Madness heaped the measure of disaster!"

Isolde has neither heard what they say, nor does she appear to
recognise them. Half of her clearly has gone with Tristan, the
rest is near taking wing, according to her word: "Where Tristan's
house and home, there will Isolde abide." Her own swan-song takes
us a little way with her into her _Liebes-tod_, her love-death.
Her eyes, fixed in contemplation of his face, have the vision of
it returning to life. She sees him re-arise, powerful and loving,
growing in glory till he assumes transcendent splendour. "Do you
see it, friends,--do you not see it?" she asks, of what shines
so vividly before her that her face is transfigured as if with
reflected light. And music is shed from this luminous ascending
form.... "Am I alone to hear it?" she exclaims, it is so clear
to her,--music wonderful and soft, which says everything, which
gently reconciles one to all. It grows, it swells, it penetrates,
uplifts.... And what is this enfolding her? Floods of soft air!
Billow