Fear

Irene Wagner leads an untroubled bourgeois life in Vienna, married to a well-known defence lawyer and mother of two, and has been visiting a young pianist for some months. Leaving his flat one afternoon, she is stopped by a stranger who claims to be the man's discarded mistress and demands money. The demands return, and dread settles into the smallest routines of her household. Zweig follows the effect of blackmail on a woman who can confide in no one. The story examines guilt, silence, and what a secret does to an ordered life.