Explore "The Fever of Life" by Fergus Hume on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
She smiles she laughs! she talks of this and that -- To all appearances a very woman. Ah! but that phrase bears deep interpretation -- "A very woman" is a treacherous thing; Her smile's a lie -- a lie to hide the truth, For when the time is ripe for all her schemes "A very woman" slips her smiling mask, And lo! behold, a look which means, "You die. "
One who has been in strange lands, and ventured his life in far countries, is by no means anxious to court again the dangers he has so happily escaped. The traveller, telling his tales by his lately gained fireside, shudders as he remembers the perils he has dared, the risks he has encountered, and is thankful for his present safety, so thankful indeed that he is unwilling to place his life for the second time at the disposal of chance.