ere, and lets himself down, when the sprite rises, light
as a bubble, to the surface. He is calling her an impudent fish
and a deceitful young lady, when Wellgunde sighs, "Thou beautiful
one!" He turns quickly, inquiring naively, "Do you mean me?" She
says, "Have nothing to do with Woglinde. Turn sooner to me!" He is
but too willing, vows that he thinks her much the more beautiful
and gleaming, and prays she will come further down. She stops short
of arm's-length. He pours forth his elementary passion. She feigns
a wish to see her handsome gallant more closely. After a brief
comedy of scanning his face, with insulting promptness she appears
to change her mind, and with the unkindest descriptive terms slipping
from his grasp swims away. And again rings the chorus of malicious
musical laughter. Then the cruellest of the three, Flosshilde, takes
the poor swain in hand. She not only comes down, she allows herself
to be held, she wreathes her slender arms around him, presses him
tenderly and flatters him in music well calculated to daze with
delight. He is not warned by her words, as, while they sit embraced,
she says, "Thy piercing glance, thy stubborn beard, might I see
the one, feel the other, forever! The rough locks of thy prickly
hair, might they forever flow around Flosshilde! Thy toad's shape,
thy croaking voice, oh, might I, wondering and mute, see and hear
them exclusively for ever!" It is the sudden mocking laughter of
the two listening sisters which draws him from his dream--when
Flosshilde slips from his hold, and the three again swim merrily
around, and laugh, and when his angry wail rises call down to him
to be ashamed of himself! But not even then do they let him rest;
they hold forth new hopes, inviting and exciting him to chase them,
till fairly aflame with love and wrath he begins a mad pursuit,
climbing, slipping, falling to the foot of the rocks, starting
upwards again, clutching at this one and that, still eluded with
ironical laughter, until, realizing his impotence, breathless and
quaking with rage, he shakes his clenched hand at them, foaming,
"Let me catch one with this fist!"

He is glaring upward at them, speechless with fury, when his eyes
become fixed upon a brilliant point, growing in size and radiance
until the whole flood is illumined. There is an exquisite hush of
a moment. The sun has risen and kindled its reflection in the gold.
The music describes better than words the spreading of tremu