"Irene Wagner has been married for eight years and is tired of her bourgeois and predictable existence as wife and mother. She starts an affair with an up-and-coming young pianist but finds herself being blackmailed by her lover's former mistress ... Irene is soon in the grip of an agonizing fear." "Written in the spring of 1913, and first published in 1920, this novella is one of Stefan Zweig's most powerful studies of a woman's mind and emotions. Roberto Rossellini's film La paura (1954) was based on this novella." --Book Jacket.