What happens
Historian Latimer dines with the sophisticated Slake, who proposes a wager testing whether love can withstand hunger. Slake offers a large sum to Latimer and his fiancee Catherine Vane if they can endure a test modeled on a Renaissance prince's cruel experiment. Latimer weighs the offer against his future and his longing for security with Catherine. The story is adapted for Suspense from a story by Stephen Vincent Benet, and the episode is from June 1960. Phil Meader plays Latimer, Santos Ortega plays Slake, and Ellen McCray plays Catherine.
A residence on Madison Avenue, where Latimer and Slake talk over dinner, and a third-floor room where the wager's test takes place.
Characters: Latimer, Slake, Catherine Vane
Listen for: Slake's proposal to Latimer and Catherine, and the terms of the hunger test.
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.