"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.