Then follows a scene that is, and always will be, a stumbling-block: Wotan seeks to explain his position in quasi-Schopenhauerian terminology and at immense length. We know all about it: it has been explained amply in the _Rhinegold_ and in the scene we have just witnessed, and now he must needs go over the ground again--with dreary and soporific effect. Brünnhilda, as love incarnate, pleads for the man and woman whose only crime in her eyes is that they love (for laws are things pure love cannot understand). Wotan cannot but be obdurate; he pronounces sentence on Siegmund and goes off in a storming rage. Sadly Brünnhilda, comprehending nothing of the compulsion Wotan is subject to--for how should love know aught of greed for power?--picks up her weapons ("How heavy they have grown!" she says) and prepares to warn Siegmund he must die. (No warrior could look upon a Valkyrie save in the hour of his death; therefore no living being had ever seen one.) As sounds of the approaching steps of panting people are heard she retires amongst the rocks; Siegmund and Sieglinda stagger in, the woman fainting. She has sinned and is overwhelmed with terror; he cannot comfort her; she faints, then sleeps--the Valkyrie having thrown a spell on her. Siegmund bends over her; slowly Brünnhilda advances and calls, "Siegmund! I come to call thee hence"; he raises his head, sees her, and knows his fate. This is the final crushing blow; the Volsung had always deserted him; but he had found the magic sword and thought the promised help would not fail him in his worst need. (Truly the gods treat us as toys to be broken at pleasure!) He refuses to go, and speaks blasphemy of the high gods; Brünnhilda is horrified: here she is going to take him to Valhalla to feast on delights for ever--and he scorns her. He ridicules Valhalla and Wotan and the serving-maidens: he wonders who the Valkyrie is, so beautiful and cold and stern. The scene is one of the fullest dramatic intensity: at last Siegmund asks whether, if he goes to Valhalla, he will find his wife there. "Siegmund will see Sieglinda no more," is the answer: Siegmund for the moment is crushed, but again rebels, and takes his sword to kill first Sieglinda and then himself. Brünnhilda is overcome with admiration: _this_, at any rate, this love she can understand; she tells him to prepare to fight Hunding and she will help him.