While they are singing, the barrier of flame in the background burns brightly, and its light grows pale only as dawn breaks slowly over the scene.  The rope which the Norns are weaving then suddenly parts beneath their fingers; so they bind the fragments about them and sink slowly into the ground, to join their mother Erda, wailing a prophecy concerning the end of the old heathen world:—­

   ’Away now is our knowledge! 
    The world meets
    From wisdom no more;
    Below to Mother, below!’

As they vanish, the day slowly breaks, and Siegfried and Brunhilde come out of the cave.  The former is in full armour and bears a jewelled shield, the latter leads her horse, Grane, by the bridle.  Tenderly Brunhilde bids her lover farewell, telling him that she will not restrain his ardour, for she knows it is a hero’s part to journey out into the world and perform the noble tasks which await him.  But her strength and martial fury have entirely departed since she has learned to love, and she repeatedly adjures him not to forget her, promising to await his homecoming behind her flickering barrier of flame, and to think constantly of him while he is away.  Siegfried reminds her that she need not fear he will forget her as long as she wears the Nibelung ring, the seal of their troth, and gladly accepts from her in exchange the steed Grane.  Although it can no longer scurry along the paths of air, this horse is afraid of nothing, and is ready to rush through water and fire at his command.

As Siegfried goes down the hill leading his steed, Brunhilde watches him out of sight, and it is only when the last echoes of his hunting horn die away in the distance that the curtain falls.

The next scene is played at Worms on the Rhine.  Gunther and his sister Gutrune are sitting in their ancestral hall, with their half-brother Hagen.  He is the son of Alberich, and has been begotten with the sole hope that he will once help his father to recover the Nibelung ring.  Hagen advises Gunther to remember the duty he owes his race, and to marry as soon as possible, and recommends as suitable mate the fair Brunhilde, who is fenced in by a huge barrier of living flame.

Gunther is not at all averse to matrimony, and is anxious to secure the peerless bride proposed, yet he knows he can never pass through the flames, and asks how Brunhilde is to be won.  Hagen, who as a Nibelung knows the future, foretells that Siegfried, the dauntless hero, will soon be there, and adds that, if they can only efface from his memory all recollection of past love by means of a magic potion, they can soon induce him to promise his aid in exchange for the hand of Gutrune.