are!--withdraws, audibly bolting the door
behind him.

Left alone, Siegmund lies down beside the dying fire. To remove
himself during the night as far as possible from Hunding's reach
is not the solution suggesting itself naturally to him. Yet there
he stands, pledged to meet an enemy, and not a weapon to his hand
of offence or defence. The difficulty of his position is certainly
as great as could be, and, reaching the full consciousness of it, he
recalls to mind that his father had promised him a sword, which he
should find in the hour of his greatest need. "Unarmed I am fallen
in the house of the enemy; here I rest, devoted to his vengeance.
A woman I have seen, gloriously fair.... She to whom my longing
draws me, who with a rapturous charm constrains me, is held in
thraldom by the man who mocks my unarmed condition...." Could need,
indeed, be greater? With the whole strength of that need, in a
cry, long, urgent, fit to pierce the walls of Walhalla, he calls
upon his father for the promised sword: "Waelse! Waelse! Where is
your sword?..."

A flame leaps from the embers and illuminates the ash-tree, bringing
into view, at the spot Sieglinde had indicated to him with her
eyes, a sword-hilt. But though his eyes are caught by the glitter,
he does not recognise it for what it is; he watches it, without
moving, as it shines in the firelight, and, lover-like, soon lapsing
into undivided dreaming of the "flower-fair woman," plays tenderly
with the conceit of the gleam on the ash-tree being the trace of
her last bright glance. Forgetting his swordlessness and altogether
unpromising plight, he goes on weaving poetry about her until the
fire is quite out and he so nearly dozes that when a white form
comes gliding through the door bolted by Hunding, he does not stir
until addressed: "Guest, are you asleep?"

Sieglinde has mixed narcotic herbs in her husband's drink, and
bids the stranger make use of the night to provide for his safety.
"Let me advise you of a weapon.... Oh, might you obtain it! The
most splendid of heroes I must call you, for it is destined to
the strongest alone." And she relates how at the marriage-feast
of Hunding, while the men drank, and the woman who "unconsulted
had been offered him for wife by ignoble traffickers" sat sadly
apart, a stranger appeared, an elderly man in grey garb, whose
hat-brim concealed one of his eyes. But the brilliant beam of the
other eye created terror in the bystanders,--all s