Complete and unabridged, with 30 full-page plates by Winslow Homer, William Merritt Chase and John Atkinson Grimshaw. An American engineer in France in 1914 is drawn into the counter-espionage of the first weeks of the war by a girl whose loyalty he cannot establish. Robert Chambers wrote fast and elegantly and had a genuine eye for the moment when a country changes. The book is a romance built on a real anxiety, and the crowd scenes in Paris are the best of it. Thirty paintings from the century around it, by Chase, Sargent and others, carry the same theme of Americans abroad in a Europe on the edge of change.

Robert W. Chambers (1865-1933) was an American writer born in Brooklyn who trained as an artist in Paris before turning to fiction. He is remembered now for one early book of weird tales, The King in Yellow, and was known in his lifetime for society romances and wartime thrillers. His works include The King in Yellow, The Dark Star, The Fighting Chance, and The Slayer of Souls.