Kundry has been amazed and somewhat alarmed, but for a moment still, as it appears, has not understood. She leaves her flowery couch and approaches Parsifal, where he is kneeling in supplication to the Lord of Mercy; with soft arts she attempts to reconquer his attention, but with an effect wide of her expectation, for, while she plies him with caresses, he is thinking, and we hear him think: "Yes, that voice, even thus it fell upon his ear.... And that glance, I recognise it clearly, which smiled away his peace.... So the lip trembled for him. ... So the throat arched.... So the tresses laughingly gleamed!... So the soft cheek pressed close against his own,... and so, in league with all the sorrows, so her mouth kissed away his soul's salvation!" As if the reinforcements from Heaven, which he prayed, had suddenly reached him, he rises in inspired strength, frees himself and thrusts her resolutely from him: "Destroyer, away from me! Forever and ever away!"
From this onward he is a different Parsifal, not in the least a boy any more. It is as if in the storm which swept him he had found himself, his anchorage and his strength. And now we gather that Kundry really has had an inkling of what is at work in him. She drops at once the fairly simple methods she has up to this used, and, it is not quite clear at first whether still as a mighty Huntress, discarding one weapon and taking another better adapted to bring down the quarry, or at last in true earnest, she invokes--pressing, not to be denied--his pity. She reveals--and it is as if beauty and splendour should lift the veil from a hidden ulcer--her strange history, the ancient sin, the curse upon her, the despair that is denied tears and can only voice itself in laughter. "Since your heart is capable only of feeling the sorrows of others," she pleads, "feel mine!" In him, as he has become within the hour, she recognises a deliverer, but, illogically, thirsts the more for his love. From this figure with the firm, compassionate eyes and the exalted self-possession, something breathes which associates him to her sense with the figure, sought by her through the centuries, of the derided Victim. She feels herself face to face once more with the Christ-spirit. But the blind desire of her dual personality is that pardon should wear the form of love. Parsifal, with every moment more firmly established in his strength and purpose, replies to her madness with a calm homily,--his theme, how from the springs of passion flow waters of thirst. Words of wisdom, eternal truths, drop from the so young lips of the fool. Kundry, who has listened in wonder, exclaims: "So it was my kiss which gave you universal vision! The full cup of my love then would make you to a god!" and coming back eagerly to her point: "Deliver the world, if such is your mission. If an hour can make you to a god, let me, for that hour, suffer damnation...." "For you, too, sinner, I will find salvation," is Parsifal's mild reply. "Let me love you in your godlikeness, that shall be salvation for me!" "Love and salvation both shall reward you, if you will show me the way to Amfortas!"