“Why did Brünnhilde ride into the fire?” “My, what made you think of that, the Wagner music? Why, in those days, that is what the women did. It was called immolation. They offered themselves on the pyre of the beloved.” “Yes, but why?” “For love, I imagine. When one’s love of the beloved is greater than one’s love of life or of one’s self, one sometimes prefers death. It is not so much an immolation of the body, I think, of one’s physical being as—” she paused to select her words. “What, then?” “As an immolation of the heart.”
