"MY LOVE SHALL CALL HIM BACK FROM THE GRAVE!"

"Oh, my dear, how ill you look this morning. Surely you did not sleep well!" Helen Fox exclaimed, gazing in surprise and pain at Kathleen's pale cheeks and heavy, somber eyes.

It was the morning after her painful interview with Ralph. Kathleen had not closed her heavy eyes all night for thinking of her lost lover and his cruel, parting words. They had pierced her heart like a thorn, and some sweet, sad lines, strangely appropriate, rang in dizzy changes through her brain:

"Yes," the girl thought, sadly, bitterly, "the root of that love went so deep in my heart that I can never pluck it out unless my life goes with it! Oh, God! that I could forget—that I could give all my heart to the one who holds the promise of my hand! Oh, Teddy, Teddy! you deserve more of me than this! You are so good, so noble, you believe in me so fully, little dreaming that the heart which should be yours is given to another!"

She looked at Helen with a smile so faint that it was sadder than tears. She could not speak, and Helen put her arm tenderly about the drooping little figure, so pathetic in its unspoken despair, understanding without one word all the sorrow in Kathleen's heart.

And even then the newsboys running through the streets were shouting wildly:

"Extra copies of The Globe—all about the murder of the handsome actor, Ralph Chainey, by his jealous wife!"

Their startled ears caught the sound—the name. Starting apart, the two beautiful young girls gazed with blanched faces into each other's eyes.

The words were repeated clearly just beneath the window—blasting words, that coldly drove the shuddering blood back from Kathleen's lips to her heart. With a moan, she slipped down to the floor, winding her arms about Helen's knees, leaning her head against her while she wailed:

"Dead! Murdered! Oh, my love, Ralph!"

Then consciousness fled, she slipped inertly to the floor, and Helen, with a pallid face and trembling limbs, ran out to purchase a copy of The Globe.

Ere Kathleen had recovered from her swoon, Helen had hastily run over the startling news—the attempted murder of Ralph Chainey by Fedora, the woman whom he was suing in the courts for divorce.

"But for the opportune entrance of his brother, Mr. Earl Chainey," ran the paragraph, "the fiend would have succeeded in her fell design. The deadly blade was descending a second time to sheath itself in the victim's breast, when she was caught and violently hurled aside by Earl Chainey. She proved to be Fedora, the wife whom he was suing for divorce. She now lies in a prison cell, awaiting her punishment, which will probably be a capital one, as Ralph Chainey has never regained consciousness, owing to the loss of blood, and his death is momentarily expected."

It was to bear this terrible shock to her heart that Kathleen recovered consciousness. Was it not a wonder she did not go mad with the horror of it all?

Parting from her only yesterday in despair and anger—lying dead, perhaps, this moment—dying at least, and dying before he had forgiven her for her coldness and hardness. Oh, God, the pity of it all!

Weeping, she lay upon Helen's breast. Pride all gone, she laid her heart bare to her sympathetic friend.

"Oh, Helen, it will kill me unless I go to him—unless he speaks my forgiveness before he dies!"

"You shall go my darling," was the answer; and in less than an hour the carriage was at the door. The two girls stepped into it, and they were rapidly driven to Mrs. Chainey's suburban home.

All the way Kathleen lay upon her friend's breast, weeping, always weeping. In all her long after-life she could never forget that long hour of misery and suspense, in which she could not tell whether she should find him dead or alive. Would he pronounce her forgiveness, or would his lips be stiff in death, and the memory of his anger remain forever a thorn in her heart?

How the cold March rain swirled through the leafless shrubbery about the great stone house, with its closed doors and windows, suggesting so vividly the presence of death. Thank God! there was one thing lacking—the funereal crape upon the door. At the worst, he was still alive.

"Alive, alive! oh, thank God!" murmured Kathleen through her raining tears.

Helen tenderly supported her as they left the carriage. Soon they were within the house; Kathleen was waiting with a wildly beating heart for some one to come to them.

But when Ralph's mother came to them, Kathleen was beyond speech. It was Helen who had to prefer the request that they should see Ralph—"Friends, old and dear friends," she said, in excuse.

The gentle, gray-haired lady looked in wonder at the beautiful, weeping girl, the fairest she had ever beheld. Her heart went out to her at those tears.

"They are for my boy," she thought, tenderly.

But she hesitated, for the doctors had forbidden any one to enter the room.

"He knows no one. He has spoken but twice, and then just to utter a name," she said, looking doubtfully at the two fair supplicants.

"A name?" whispered Kathleen, eagerly.

"Yes; it is that of a young girl whom I fancy he loves. If it were only her now," she said, musingly.

"The name?" questioned Helen Fox, with eager impatience.

"Kathleen!" replied Mrs. Chainey.

Oh, what a cry came from Kathleen's lips!

"Oh, my love, my love, you have not forgotten me! I am Kathleen! Oh, madame, let me go to him!"

"Come!" was the thrilling answer, and as she led the girl away, Kathleen's heart throbbed wildly with the thought that she should hear his lips pronounce her forgiveness.

"And he shall not die! My love shall call him back from the grave!" she sobbed.