Brunhilde pays but indifferent attention to all this account, and it is only when Waltraute informs her that it is in her power to avert the gods’ doom by restoring the ring she wears to the mourning Rhine-daughters, that she starts angrily from her abstraction, swearing she will never part with Siegfried’s gift, the emblem and seal of their plighted troth.

Waltraute, seeing no prayers will avail to win the ring, then rides sadly away, while the twilight gradually settles down, and the barrier of flames burns on with a redder glow.  At the sound of a hunting horn, Brunhilde rushes joyously to the back of the scene, with a rapturous cry of ‘Siegfried!’ but shrinks suddenly back in fear and dismay when, instead of the bright beloved form, a dark man appears through the flickering flames.  It is Siegfried, who, by virtue of the tarn-helmet, has assumed Gunther’s form and voice, and boldly claims Brunhilde as his bride, in reward for having made his way through the barrier of fire.  Brunhilde indignantly refuses to recognize him as her master.  Passionately kissing her ring, she loudly declares that as long as it graces her finger she will have the strength to repulse every attack and keep her troth to the giver.  This declaration so incenses Siegfried—­who, owing to the magic potion, has entirely forgotten her and her love—­that he rushes towards her, and after a violent struggle wrenches the ring from her finger, and places it upon his own.

Cowed by the violence of this rude wooer, and deprived of her ring, Brunhilde no longer resists, but tacitly yields when he claims her as wife, and both soon disappear in the cave.  There Siegfried, mindful of his oath to marry her by proxy only, lays his unsheathed sword between him and his friend’s bride:—­

   ’Now, Nothung, witness well
    That faithfully I wooed;
    Lest I wane in truth to my brother,
    Bar me away from his bride!’

Hagen, left alone at Worms to guard the hall of the Gibichungs, is favored in his sleep by a visit from his father, Alberich.  The dwarf informs him that ever since the gods touched the fatal ring their power has waned, and that he must do all in his power to recover it from Siegfried, who again holds it, and who little suspects its magic power.  As Alberich disappears, carrying with him Hagen’s promise to do all he can, the latter awakens just in time to welcome the returning Siegfried.  The young hero joyfully announces the success of their expedition, and rapturously claims Gutrune as his bride.  After hearing her lover’s account of his night’s adventures, the maiden leads him into the hall in search of rest and refreshment, while Hagen, summoning the people with repeated blasts of his horn, admonishes them to deck the altars of Wotan, Freya, and Donner, and to prepare to receive their master and mistress with every demonstration of joy.  The festive preparations are barely completed, when Gunther and Brunhilde arrive.