[Illustration: Some bars of music]

The lovers are presently awakened. At the very climax of a mad,
tumultuous passage Brangaena gives a scream; Kurvenal rushes in, and
then--enter Mark, Melot and the other hunters. Melot's trap has worked
satisfactorily.

The cold red dawn slowly breaks. The phantoms of the daylight have
broken in upon the dream of night, which alone is true. It is here that
many would have the act terminate. Such an ending would leave the idea
of the act half expressed, and shatter the noble architectonical scheme
of the whole drama. The idea of the act--that the light is the lovers'
enemy, the dark their friend and refuge--has to be worked out to prepare
for the last act; the idea of the drama--that the lovers must be seen
gradually thrust away from life (which is light) to death (which is
eternal night)--must be carried one step further. Mark, in an agony of
grief, asks them why they, the two he loves best in the world, dishonour
him in so frightful a fashion. He presses home to them their sin and his
suffering, his affection and their indifference to it; and he ends up
with the question, "Why?" Tristan cannot answer; he perceives only that
Mark's love is a more terrible menace for them than any trap laid by
Melot. Without their passion they cannot live, and it is not Melot and
the general outside world that threaten to sunder them, but their
protector and dearest friend. The passion is irresistible, and Tristan
faces the inevitable. He asks Isolda if she will follow him where he is
now going: she replies that she will; and he, after taunting Melot with
his treachery, lets him thrust him through with his sword. The drama has
moved a stage further on, and there remains now only the logical
completion. Anyone who thinks all this is to read into the opera a