As afternoon darkened into evening Brünnhilde sat on her high rock looking at the Ring on her finger with loving eyes, and thinking tenderly of the hero who had placed it there, and who was perhaps, even then, leaving the paths of men to come to her side once more. Suddenly a flash of lightning appeared across the sky and a clap of thunder sounded far away. Strange sounds broke the stillness, sounds well remembered by her: the hoofs of wind-horses speeding through the clouds, the whistling of rushing blasts, the ring of steel armor. Starting up in wild excitement, she saw a black thunder-cloud rushing towards the rock. “Brünnhilde! Sister! Are you asleep or awake?” called the clear voice of one of the warrior goddesses, as a war-horse sprang to earth from the midst of the clouds. With a cry of joy Brünnhilde ran to meet the Walküre, saying: “Waltraute, truest sister, welcome!” and asking tenderly about the rest of the maidens and her father Wotan. But Waltraute was sad and anxious, and seemed in fearful haste. She interrupted Brünnhilde’s passionate description of her hero and her happiness in his love by sad words of the gloom that reigned in Walhalla. She told the story of the hewing of the World-Ash, the fagots piled high about the great palace; of the gods and heroes assembled in awe. She spoke of Wotan sitting in silence holding his broken spear in his hand. She said that once, and once only, had he spoken, and that he had then said: “When the Rhine daughters gain from Brünnhilde the Ring the world will be released from the power of the spell.” Waltraute begged Brünnhilde to give her the Ring, so that she, Waltraute, might carry it to the Rhine Maidens. “If you wish, you may ward off the shadow of the gods,” said the Walküre, kneeling at her sister’s feet. But Brünnhilde looked at her as though in a trance. “Like a sorrowful dream it seems—this that you tell me. I do not understand it. I am no longer one of the gods. You, pale sister—what have you to do with me?” Passionately, Waltraute asked for the Ring which she wore, but Brünnhilde replied that it was Siegfried’s love-gift, and that she would never give it up. Again Waltraute besought her, for the sake of the gods, the bright mighty gods, who were going to destruction, to give up the magic circlet. Brünnhilde answered quietly that she prized love more than the welfare of all the gods, and that the Ring was dearer to her than the palace of Walhalla; and she bade Waltraute be gone, refusing once for all to give up Siegfried’s gift. “Woe! woe!” wailed the Walküre, speeding wildly away. “Woe for you, sister! Woe for the gods in Walhalla! Woe!” She was gone, amid thunder and rushing winds. Sitting again on the rock alone, Brünnhilde looked down to where the guarding fire-circle burned brighter and brighter. A horn-call sounded in the distance. “Siegfried!” cried Brünnhilde, rushing forward.