Brünnhilde answered quietly that she prized love more than the welfare of all the gods, and that the Ring was dearer to her than the palace of Walhalla; and she bade Waltraute be gone, refusing once for all to give up Siegfried’s gift.
“Woe! woe!” wailed the Walküre, speeding wildly away. “Woe for you, sister! Woe for the gods in Walhalla! Woe!”
She was gone, amid thunder and rushing winds.
Sitting again on the rock alone, Brünnhilde looked down to where the guarding fire-circle burned brighter and brighter. A horn-call sounded in the distance.
“Siegfried!” cried Brünnhilde, rushing forward.
But who was that who sprang from out the fire and stood before her? Not Siegfried, surely, but some stranger—a stranger with face partly masked by a curious helmet of some sort.
No wonder that she did not recognize her hero in the man before her, who, by the aid of the Tarnhelm, bore the semblance of Gunther, the Gibichung. He told her that he had come to take her away with him and marry her; and when she ordered him to yield before the strength of the mighty Ring on her finger, he caught her hand and tore the circlet from it, placing it on his own.
“Now yield to me! You must be my wife,” he commanded; and, weak and powerless, Brünnhilde was conquered and led away by the warrior, who was none other than Siegfried—had she but known it!—Siegfried, her hero, who did not remember her at all, and only looked upon her as the bride of his brother-hero Gunther, the bride that must be delivered safely into the real Gibichung’s hand.
BRÜNNHILDE AND SIEGFRIED