Brunhilde pays but indifferent attention to all this account,
and it is only when Waltraute informs her that it is in her
power to avert the gods' doom by restoring the ring she wears
to the mourning Rhine-daughters, that she starts angrily from
her abstraction, swearing she will never part with Siegfried's
gift, the emblem and seal of their plighted troth.

Waltraute, seeing no prayers will avail to win the ring, then
rides sadly away, while the twilight gradually settles down,
and the barrier of flames burns on with a redder glow. At
the sound of a hunting horn, Brunhilde rushes joyously to the
back of the scene, with a rapturous cry of 'Siegfried!' but
shrinks suddenly back in fear and dismay when, instead of the
bright beloved form, a dark man appears through the flickering
flames. It is Siegfried, who, by virtue of the tarn-helmet, has
assumed Gunther's form and voice, and boldly claims Brunhilde
as his bride, in reward for having made his way through the
barrier of fire. Brunhilde indignantly refuses to recognize
him as her master. Passionately kissing her ring, she loudly
declares that as long as it graces her finger she will have
the strength to repulse every attack and keep her troth to the
giver. This declaration so incenses Siegfried--who, owing to the
magic potion, has entirely forgotten her and her love--that he
rushes towards her, and after a violent struggle wrenches the
ring from her finger, and places it upon his own.

Cowed by the violence of this rude wooer, and deprived of her
ring, Brunhilde no longer resists, but tacitly yields when
he claims her as wife, and both soon disappear in the cave.
There Siegfried, mindful of his oath to marry her by proxy only,
lays his unsheathed sword between him and his friend's bride:--

'Now, Nothung, witness well
That faithfully I wooed;
Lest I wane in truth to my brother,
Bar me away from his bride!'

Hagen, left alone at Worms to guard the hall of the Gibichungs,
is favored in his sleep by a visit from his father, Alberich. The
dwarf informs him that ever since the gods touched the fatal
ring their power has waned, and that he must do all in his
power to recover it from Siegfried, who again holds it, and
who little suspects its magic power. As Alberich disappears,
carrying with him Hagen's promise to do all he can, the latter
awakens just in time to welcome the returning Siegfried. The
young hero joyfully announces the success of their ex