"I am sincere, and my actions shall prove it; but I shall permit no mistaken self-sacrifice on your part, nor any attempt to shield me from the punishment I well deserve." She suddenly turned upon him a radiant face in which he read his happiness, and faltered: "Jack, I do believe you, although the change seems wrought by some heavenly magic. But it will take a long time to pay you up. I hope to be your dear torment for a lifetime." He caught her in such a strong, impetuous embrace that she gasped: "I thought you were--cold to our sex." "It's not your sex that I am clasping, but you--YOU, my Eve. Like the first man, I have won my bride under the green trees and beneath the open sky." "Yes, Jack; and I give you my whole heart as truly as did the first woman when there was but one man in all the world. That is MY REVENGE." This is what Will Munson wrote some weeks later: "Well, Jack, I've had the yellow fever, and it was the most fortunate event of my life. I was staying with a charming family, and they would not permit my removal to a hospital. One of my bravest and most devoted nurses has consented to become my wife. I hope you punished that little wretch Eva Van Tyne as she deserved." "Confound your fickle soul!" muttered Ackland. "I punished her as she did not deserve; and I risked more than life in doing so. If her heart had not been as good as gold and as kind as Heaven she never would have looked at me again." Ackland is quite as indifferent to the sex as ever, but Eva has never complained that he was cold to her. A CHRISTMAS-EVE SUIT The Christmas holidays had come, and with them a welcome vacation for Hedley Marstern. Although as yet a briefless young lawyer, he had a case in hand which absorbed many of his thoughts--the conflicting claims of two young women in his native village on the Hudson. It must not be imagined that the young women were pressing their claims except as they did so unconsciously, by virtue of their sex and various charms. Nevertheless, Marstern was not the first lawyer who had clients over whom midnight oil was burned, they remaining unaware of the fact.