but to promise she would be his wife, the wife
of Gunnar as she supposed, for Sigurd wore Gunnar's shape, and she had
sworn to wed whoever should ride the flames. And he gave her a ring, and
she gave him back the ring he had given her before in his own shape as
Sigurd, and it was the last ring of that poor dwarf Andvari. Then he
rode out again, and he and Gunnar changed shapes, and each was himself
again, and they went home to the witch Queen's, and Sigurd gave the
dwarf's ring to his wife, Gudrun. And Brynhild went to her father, and
said that a King had come called Gunnar, and had ridden the fire, and
she must marry him. 'Yet I thought,' she said, 'that no man could have
done this deed but Sigurd, Fafnir's bane, who was my true love. But he
has forgotten me, and my promise I must keep.'

So Gunnar and Brynhild were married, though it was not Gunnar but Sigurd
in Gunnar's shape, that had ridden the fire.

And when the wedding was over and all the feast, then the magic of
the witch's wine went out of Sigurd's brain, and he remembered all. He
remembered how he had freed Brynhild from the spell, and how she was his
own true love, and how he had forgotten and had married another woman,
and won Brynhild to be the wife of another man.

But he was brave, and he spoke not a word of it to the others to make
them unhappy. Still he could not keep away the curse which was to come
on every one who owned the treasure of the dwarf Andvari, and his fatal
golden ring.

And the curse soon came upon all of them. For one day, when Brynhild
and Gudrun were bathing, Brynhild waded farthest out into the river, and
said she did that to show she was Guirun's superior. For her husband,
she said, had ridden through the flame when no other man dared face it.

Then Gudrun was very angry, and said that it was Sigurd, not Gunnar, who
had ridden the flame, and had received from Brynhild that fatal ring,
the ring of the dwarf Andvari.

Then Brynhild saw the ring which Sigard had given to Gudrun, and she
knew it and knew all, and she turned as pale as a dead woman, and went
home. All that evening she never spoke. Next day she told Gunnar, her
husband, that he was a coward and a liar, for he had never ridden the
flame, but had sent Sigurd to do it for him, and pretended that he had
done it himself. And she said he would never see her glad in his hall,
never drinking wine, never playing chess, never embroidering with the
golden thread, never speaki