OH, RALPH CHAINEY, WAKE!

Ralph Chainey left the presence of his loved and lost Kathleen with a heart full of bitterness and pain, and hurried home.

He had concluded his engagement in Boston the previous evening, and it was a great relief to him, for he was eager to get away from the city that held Kathleen. Stay there, and see her wedded to another, he could not! That way lay madness.

He had dismissed his company for several months. He was going to travel, he said, although the manager pointed out to him that now was the time to reap a golden harvest, if ever. He was even more popular now than before, if such a thing could be. The divorce proceedings had given him notoriety. People who had not gone to see him act before, went now, just for a sight of his handsome face.

He loved his art, but the money was no object to him. Fortune had already showered her golden favors on him in lavish measure. He could not be tempted to remain.

"No, mother, I can not stay," he answered, sadly, when she pleaded with him. "I must get away as soon as this divorce business is settled. That will be soon—in a week or so, my lawyers tell me. Then I will go abroad and try to live down this unpleasant notoriety. You do not blame me, mother?"

She sighed, but answered bravely:

"No; but it will be very lonely, my son."

"You will have my brother, his wife and little ones to cheer you," he said, moved to the heart by her tears. He knew well that he was her favorite son.

He kissed her, and went to his own room, wrote some letters, and then went with his mother for a drive. At night he felt as if the day had been a month long. Oh, how cruel it was, this love that mastered him in spite of his pride!

He threw himself down, dressed, on a couch in the luxurious room, and gave himself up to bitter-sweet memories of the girl he loved so hopelessly, living over in his thoughts every time he had met her until now, when her dark eyes had made shipwreck of his life. Time passed unnoted, although the tiny French clock had tinkled musically the midnight hour.

What a picture of manly beauty he made, lying there with half-shut eyes on the rich couch with its Oriental draperies. The gas-light, half-turned down, cast weird shadows all about the room. In the little sleeping-room beyond, seen through the half-drawn portiÈre, all was dark and still. Did a white, desperate face with gleaming eyes peer out of that gloom upon the young man resting there in his velvet dressing-gown, one shapely hand tossed up over his brown curly head, the dark, curly lashes drooping downward to the pale cheek?

Yes, he was well worth looking at, this gifted young actor, this genius who at barely twenty-five had scored such dazzling successes in the dramatic world, and written his name up high upon the scroll of fame. It was no wonder that women raved over his beauty and his genius, and that they filled his daily mail with love letters that he flung into the fire after one contemptuous glance.

But were they eyes of love that gleamed on him now, lying so pale and still and sad, with his thoughts upon his beautiful young love?

Alas! a gleam of tigerish hate shone in those steel-blue orbs as they watched the young man; and when at last the fringed lashes drooped against his cheek, a faint sigh of relief escaped the lips of the impatient watcher. For hours and hours she had been waiting there; but it seemed as if he did not mean to retire to-night. Now he had fallen into a light doze. Perhaps he would sleep there all night.

Oh, Ralph Chainey, wake! From the curtained darkness beyond a fiend is gliding toward you!

The shrouding hood of the long cloak has fallen back from the face of a woman—a bold, handsome face with steel-blue eyes, and glittering golden hair. In her upraised hand glitters a long thin dagger, on her face is stamped in awful, ashen pallor the fell purpose—murder!

But he sleeps on lightly, dreaming, perhaps, of Kathleen, while this beautiful fury glides soundlessly across the thick moquette carpet, gains his side, poises her shining weapon on high, aims for his heart, and—it descends, it pierces his breast!

Ralph Chainey was sleeping but lightly, and as the cold steel entered his breast a shudder ran over his whole frame, the dew of pain started on his brow, and with a shriek of mortal agony he staggered to his feet, clutching blindly at the midnight assailant.

She had not counted on this; she thought her frenzied blow would be short, sharp, and decisive, that she would have time to fly from the scene of her terrible crime.

She was mistaken. His outstretched arms caught and held her with the momentary fierce strength of a dying man; his blood spurted out in hot streams upon her face and hands.

And meanwhile his shriek of agony had aroused the house. Earl Chainey, his brother, started wildly from his dreams, and his wife, affrighted at that awful sound, buried her pale face in the pillows. Mrs. Chainey, lying awake and restless, brooding over her son's departure, recognized Ralph's voice in an instant, and, with a terrible foreboding of evil, sprung forward to his rescue.

Upon the threshold of the door they met—the mother and her elder son. Earl flung the door wide, and together they sprung into the room.

Not a moment too soon was their entrance, for Ralph's momentary strength had failed from the profuse loss of blood. He had struggled madly to hold his assailant, but her superior strength had overpowered him, and as he sunk back heavily upon the couch, she raised her bloody weapon for a second, surer blow.

But it never reached its mark, for Earl's strong arm caught and flung her fiercely aside as he knelt by his fallen brother.