doors. His perishing need is shown in the
devotion with which he drains the horn she hands him. His eyes, as he
returns it, are arrested by her face, and dwell upon it with fearless
lingering scrutiny--while the strain for the first time trembles
upon the air which, singing the love of Siegmund and Sieglinde, is
to caress our hearing so many times more. His fatigue has magically
vanished. He asks to whom he owes the refreshment afforded him.
When, at her reply and request that he shall await Hunding's return,
he refers to himself as an unarmed and wounded guest, she eagerly
inquires of his wounds. But he jumps up, shaking off all thought
of wounds or weariness. His succinct narrative of the circumstances
which have brought him to her hearth, he brings to a close: "But
faster than I vanished from the mob of my pursuers, my weariness
has vanished from me. Night lay across my eyelids,--the sun now
smiles upon me anew!" She offers the guest mead to drink, at his
prayer tasting it before him. As he returns the emptied horn, again
his eyes dwell upon her face, with an emotion ever increasing.
Both gaze in simple undisguised intensity of interest. There is
a long moment's silence between them. Then, at the love he feels
surging in his bosom, remembrance comes to Siegmund of what he is,--a
man so ill-fated that it may well be feared his ill-fortune shall
infect those with whom he comes into contact. "You have relieved an
ill-fated man," he warns her, his voice unsteady with the pang of
this recognition, "may his wish turn ill-fortune from you! Sweetly
have I rested.... I will now fare further on my way!" As he turns
to the door she detains him with the quick cry: "What pursues you,
that you should thus flee?" He answers, slowly and sadly: "Misfortune
pursues me wherever I flee. Misfortune meets me wherever I go. From
you, woman, may it remain afar! I turn from you my footsteps and
my glance." His hand is on the latch, when her sharp involuntary
exclamation stops him: "Stay, then! You cannot bring sorrow into
a house where sorrow is already at home!" Deeply shaken by her
words, he fixes his eyes questioningly upon her. She meets them
for a moment, then drops her own, sad and half-ashamed. The motif
of the Waelsungen well expresses the nobility in misfortune of these
poor children of Waelse. Siegmund returns quietly to the hearth:
"Wehwalt is my name for myself. I will await Hunding." (_Weh_:
woe, sorrow, calamity, pain; _wallen_