THE PRECIPICE

_A Novel_

BY

ELIA W. PEATTIE

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

The Riverside Press Cambridge

1914




_A fanfare of trumpets is blowing to which women the world
over are listening. They listen even against their wills, and
not all of them answer, though all are disturbed. Shut their
ears to it as they will, they cannot wholly keep out the
clamor of those trumpets, but whether in thrall to love or to
religion, to custom or to old ideals of self-obliterating
duty, they are stirred. They move in their sleep, or spring
to action, and they present to the world a new problem, a new
force--or a new menace_....