"Brunhilde!" he whispered. "Where have you been? I—have—sought you——"
"Siegfried! Siegfried! forgive me! It has all been a cruel mistake! Do not die! Ah, beloved, look at me with your dear eyes again! Your kiss awakened me from a slumber of years. See, I kiss you and love you. Why do you not awaken as I did? Do not go away and leave me again! I shall not let you go!"
She pressed her lips wildly upon his, and the kiss stayed his soul yet a moment more.
"Brunhilde—mother—we will—not—part——"
The hero who knew no fear had ended his brief earth battle.
Brunhilde wept bitterly in the first outburst of grief. Then summoning all her pride and resolution, she rose and confronted Hagen.
"This is your evil deed!" she said. "You shall not fasten thoughtless words of mine upon it. There has been conspiracy here, and I fear that ye all are in it."
"There has indeed been conspiracy," the King answered sadly; "but Hagen alone is the doer of this deed, and for it he shall answer. Our conspiracy lay only in giving Siegfried a drink of forgetfulness. We did not know he had become plighted to you; and he himself was made to forget it by the potion. He served us in all innocence."
Brunhilde looked at Hagen, Gunther, and Gudrun scornfully; then turned to the retainers.
"Take up the body of Siegfried," she commanded, "and bear it to the river's brink. There we will burn it upon a funeral pyre, and there will I consign this Ring of the curse back to the Rhine-maidens."