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The Woman on the Balcony

by Dorothy Quick

 

Sherry thought she had never seen anything more beautiful than the Villa del Quisce.

White and shining it nestled halfway up one of the Italian foothills like a snowy flower sheltered by greenery. The glass glistened in the sunlight. Its marble columns were perfection and at its foot was the violent blue of a lesser lake than Como but having the same intense loveliness. Green lawns, lemon trees, oleanders and flower beds sloped down from the Villa to the sandy shore. Tall cypresses outlined the road that curved upwards. Small spring flowers grouped around the roots of the trees. Violets sprinkled the grass in abundance.

“It looks like some heavenly stage set designed by Bel Geddes,” Sherry thought, “ too beautiful to be real.” Then, suddenly looking at Gio sitting tall and straight beside her, “But it is real, and its ours — our honeymoon house —”

Just at that moment Gio slowed the car and turned to her. “Do you like it, my darling?” he asked.

The soft musical tones of his voice that held the depths of his love for her filled her with glory as it always had from the moment of their first meeting. “Oh, Gio, yes. I couldn’t like it more. It’s . . . it’s . . .” She searched for the right word. “It’s heavenly.”

He pressed his cheek against hers and the usual thrill that any contact with him gave shivered through her. “I am happy that you like it, my loved one, and behind those walls are American bathrooms, which I assure you is something to treasure. The brochure said the last owner renovated it quote ‘for modern comfort without disturbing the ancient charm’ unquote. It looks as the brochure said. At first I was nervous taking it sight unseen as the price seemed low.” He exerted pressure and the car shot forward at a good speed again, eating up the steady incline of the road with no effort.

“Is it very old?” Sherry asked.

“It belonged to the Quisces in the thirteenth century. One of them, Cardinal Alessandre de Quisce, built it. The family enjoyed it for several hundred years; then the strains petered out. Twenty-four years ago there were no de Quisces left except a cousin who descended from a female de Quisce who had married an Englishman in 1760. Her heirs had never been to Italy and the family villa meant nothing to them.

“So they sold it through the agent I got it from. It’s passed through several hands since then. Mostly rentals. The man who bought it and made the improvements didn’t stay here long to enjoy them. He was called back to America and then the war came. It was a Nazi headquarters at one time, then was rented again. Fortunately it was free so I took it — for you, my darling. You won’t be bored here?”

“Oh no, Gio — never with you — and the villa is so . . . heavenly.” As she repeated the adjective the look on her face was aesthetic.

---

The villa, on close inspection, was even more enchanting than it looked. The Quisces had sold the family furnishings along with the estate so the furniture was authentic, as well as charming.

“They are museum pieces — with comfort,” Sherry exclaimed. Indeed, the whole place was ravishing.

Gio nodded. “Each room is a picture. I cannot understand why the rent is so reasonable . . .”

“The servants are good too.” Sherry had lost her heart to Quilletta, the slim Raphael Madonna who was to be her personal maid. Antonia, the cook, was fat and jolly. Beurio, the butler and general factotum, left nothing to be desired and old Angelo, gardener and houseman, had won their hearts at once. The agent had staffed the place and the servants had been lined up at the front doors of thick wood decorated with finely carved iron to welcome the bride and groom. They had made an immediate mutual good impression.

It had been Beurio’s task to show them around, and he did it with all the flourish of his race, pointing out the special advantages, particularly proud of the baths. There were three on the second floor, complete with porcelain and nickel, made from what had probably originally been dressing rooms. They were large and spacious. Even Gio was impressed by their elegant modernity.

The front of the house, facing the lake, had two enormous rooms joined together by one of the baths, and further linked by a balcony that went straight across the front of the house.

Sherry went throught he long window onto the balcony and feasted her eyes on the superb view. “Gio,” she called, “you must share this.”

A second later he stood beside her, his arm around her shoulders, warmly intimate. “We can have breakfasts here.”

“I shall never want to leave. Do we have to?” she asked.

“Not until you wish. I have taken it for three months, but I can extend the lease. If you like, I’ll buy it for you, Scamperino.” It was his pet name for her.

“I’d love it to be ours forever,” she said simply.

“Then it shall be so.” He kissed her. For a few minutes time stood still and there was only joy in the world, shared vicariously by Beurio who watched from the golden room, so called because of the rich yellow damask that predominated in the décor.

As Gio released her the sun vanished with the suddenness that it reserves only for Italy. A cold dampness smote at Sherry. She shivered.

“Come indoors.” Gio drew her back to the brightness of the yellow damask, shutting the long window behind him. “The twilights are chilly,” he remarked. Then, “Have you chosen the room for us?”

“This one, of course.”

“The contessa’s things can be brought here, Beurio,” Gio commanded. “Put mine in the other bedroom on this balcony. Then no one else will intrude upon it. I will use the room for a dressing room. There are plenty of beautiful suites on the other side and in the wings, though not of such magnificent size.” He grinned, then added as Beurio bustled off importantly, “I shall have to hold you very tight, my darling, so you will not be lost. Both of these rooms are big enough to be a house, or an apartment. The de Quisces did themselves very well. I expect this belonged to the Cardinal, who, I believe, according to history, was quite a man.”

---

Sherry was sure of it when the next morning she pulled aside some wall draperies of the yellow damask on the far side of the room and discovered murals that might have illustrated Arentino’s work.

“I suppose they couldn’t bear to paint over them so left the damask in place,” Gio explained. ‘‘The Cardinal couldn’t have them viewed by his more godIy guests, hence the curtain — from its feel I’d bet it’s the original.”

“No wonder that bed makes one feel erotic.” Sherry laughed. “Now that I look close at the carving it’s full of nymphs and satyrs doing unmentionable things . . .”

“Scamperino! I wondered when you’d notice.” Gio laughed and caught her in his arms. After all, they’d only been married a few weeks.

---

Except for breakfasts the balcony was mostly used by Gio, who came back and forth to the golden room from the other bedroom where he kept his things. That was called The Madonna’s Chamber. Sherry thought the name had a religious connotation but when she said so Gio laughed.

“More likely the Cardinal kept his mistress there. Handy like. Madonna was the name for any woman in those days. They called Lucrezia Borgia “Madonna”, my love, and her reputation was none of the best.”

It was the day after that conversation Sherry saw the woman on the balcony for the first time.

She was in her room sitting in front of the gorgeous dressing table using the great silvergilt mirror that stood upon it as a guide for her pancake make-up when she saw a shadow moving across the smooth surface. She leaned forward and there reflected in the mirror was a figure — a misty figure — because the glass in the silver frame was old.           ·

“Gio,” she called, but there was no response.

She got up and turned. She’d been sitting with her back to the balcony. There was no one there. She rushed to the long windows and out on the balcony. Just in time to see a flair of white silk disappearing into the Madonna’s Chamber. Gio had a white robe he sometimes wore. So the incident passed with her thinking Gio had been walking on the balcony and had not heard her call.

But the next morning she actually saw the woman.

She had awakened early with the sunrise throwing roseate light around her. She had raised up on one elbow to tell Gio to look at the sky which resembled a Turner painting. But Gio was not there. She was alone in the mammoth bed. At that moment a shadow cut through the rosy glow. Sherry looked out the window and there, in profile, was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. She was tall, with burnished red­gold hair that rippled in waves of splendor down her back. She wore white silk which floated around her feet like sea foam and hugged her torso close, revealing its perfection. The face was beautiful. In a second it turned towards Sherry, long enough for her to see deep-set black eyes, heavy-lidded, that seemed tragically sad as they regarded her.

It was only a brief moment; then the woman walked on. Once again Sherry reached the balcony in time to see the floating white silk vanish into the Madonna’s Chamber — Gio’s room, the room he had selected for a dressing room.

Sherry’s heart was a dead weight inside her, like the heavy brass pendulum of a clock swinging to and fro, mechanically. Gio had wanted to keep his things in a separate room. At the time she had thought it a considerate gesture, but now — jealousy was rampant, thrusting thousands of green-edged darts into her — now she thought it was on account of the woman.

All the tales she had heard of foreign men — their mistresses — came back to plague her. It was as though the sight of the woman, the connotations of her being here in the villa, had released hundreds of monstrous thoughts that she had never suspected of existence.

She hadn’t known Gio long — only a month before they were married. She had met him at a U.N. reception. One look at him, tall, handsome and full of charm, and she had loved him. Afterwards he had said it had been the same way with him. “I looked into your lovely blue eyes and my heart was at your feet,” was how he had put it. He had proposed to her· after a whirlwind courtship. They had been married almost immediately.

What had she known about him? Very little, except he came from one of the best Italian families, that he had visited America on a mission of some importance and he stood high in his country’s estimation, that he had plenty of money, an old castle near Pavia where his mother, the Contessa, and his sister lived.

“We will not go there until our honeymoon is over,” he had told her. “They want to know you and will love you as I do. You will like them, but I do not want to share you yet.”

---

She had had a letter from the Contessa welcoming her into the family, a letter plainly written by an aristocrat — and that was the sum of her knowledge of Gio. That he loved her she was sure. And yet, was she? If he had already installed a mistress in their honeymoon villa he couldn’t love her very much. She began remembering what her family lawyer had said:

“Why don’t you wait until you know him better? Visit his people. Be engaged, but don’t marry until you’ve given time a chance.”

She’d brushed that aside. Wait, when every nerve in her body cried out for Gio, when to be his wife was the goal of all her dreams. Of course she wouldn’t wait and until this moment she had been deliriously happy.

Her mind swept over the past weeks, picked out the golden moments and cherished them.

“I am a fool,” she told herself sternly. “Of course Gio loves me. I’m imagining all this. The woman is probably from the village; maybe she’s Beurio’s girlfriend.” She giggled to herself at the thought of Beurio, stately and very much the grand serviteur, with a mistress. Then Gio called, tip-toeing into the room from the balcony.

“You’re awake?” he said.

“And you were gone.” There was reproach in her tones.

“I couldn’t sleep. I had the strangest feeling as though someone were looking at me. So I went to my room and worked on my report. The High Powers wanted more detail. They said they’d never had such a brief report from me before. They didn’t know I could think of nothing but you as I wrote it. Madonna, you are so lovely.” He swept her into his arms and Sherry forgot about the woman.

But from that moment she disliked the balcony. Even when the sun was shining she felt chilly there. That very day she suggested they go down to the loggia for their morning meal. “It’s so lovely looking out at the garden,” she explained to Gio. He apparently had only one desire: to do what she wanted, and agreed that the loggia would be charming.

Beurio was only too pleased not to carry trays upstairs. So the routine was estab­ lished.

For several days Sherry forgot the woman. But then one night she saw her again. Gio had admitted he had a sore throat and said he’d sleep in the Madonna Chamber rather than risk her catching it.

The minute the words were out of his mouth Sherry was suspicious. “I don’t catch things,” she said.

“You are too precious to risk, my beloved,” Gio told her, and went over her protestations.

She couldn’t sleep. She tossed restlessly in the big bed. Suddenly she felt eyes upon her. She turned towards the windows and there on the balcony was the woman framed by the graceful curves of the arched window and spotlighted by the moon.

She was remote, beautiful, and the intensity of her gaze was somehow frightening. Sherry felt all her energy draining from her.

“Who are you? What do you want?” she cried.

 

---

The woman turned, walked away from the window, lost to vision. Sherry knew she was going towards the Madonna Chamber, that her draperies would be billowing about her like waves from the sea. She was going to Gio.

She leaped out of the bed. This was more than she could stand. She would follow the woman to Gio’s room and have a showdown. As she thrust her feet into the satin mules she had purchased at Delman’s for her honeymoon she was full of anger, rage at the woman for looking at her, disgust at Gio for allowing this to happen, annoyance at herself for being involved in such sordidity.

As she raced across the room her mood changed. She was remembering Jane Eyre, and Rochester’s mad wife who had come to stare at Jane in the night — much as the Woman had stared at her. Could it be that Gio had found himself in some such situation, and, enmeshed in love for her, gone ahead with their marriage? Or was the Woman the skeleton in his family closet — a mad sister perhaps.

But there hadn’t been madness in those deep-set velvety eyes. Unutterable sadness, ingrained tragedy, but not the glare of lunacy.

Sherry fled along the balcony, clutching her pale pink robe around her, tying the belt as she ran. There was no sign of the Woman, but of course she had had plenty of time to gain the shelter of the Madonna Chamber — and Gio —

Almost afraid to look, Sherry stood framed by the arched window of the Madonna room just as the Woman had stood in her window. She could see the bed plainly. The massive gilded frame with its four uprights, the damask cover, and Gio’s dark head on the white pillow. He was sound asleep, and it was no simulated sleep, either, for he was breathing heavily with his mouth open. His face was flushed. He looked ill. A man sick with fever, not one indulging in an amorous intrigue.

There was no sign of the Woman anywhere.

But Sherry decided to make sure. She tiptoed into the room. Gio remained undisturbed while she searched. She missed nothing. She looked behind the curtains, inside the Venetian wardrobe, and even lifted the lid of the chest that stood at the foot of Gio’s bed. There was no one there; when she went to the door leading to the hall she found it locked from the inside.

The Woman was not there — unless — she lifted the bed draperies and peered underneath. Nothing but darkness, no flicker of white draperies, and the surface of the bed, except where Gio’s body raised the covers, was quite flat.

The Woman wasn’t here. Then where could she be? She wasn’t on the balcony: that, it was plain to see in the clear moonlight, was empty. Well, perhaps she had climbed over the rail down to the ground. It didn’t seem possible, especially with those flowing white draperies. However, it was, so far as Sherry could see, the only solution — unless she had dreamed the intruder. But she knew she had not. The Woman had been real. She had actually seen her.

She leaned over and bestowed a kiss on Gio’s forehead. He was still asleep and she thought his forehead felt hot. Not wanting to disturb him, she went silently back to the other bedroom. In the morning she would examine the balcony more closely, see if it were possible to climb down from it.

---

 

But when morning came Gio was delirious with fever and for the next few days she thought of nothing but Gio and the infection that racked him.

It was the morning of the fifth day, when penicillin had once again performed its miracle and Gio was recovering that he asked, “Why did you stand in the window last night and look at me, then when I called, run away?”

She was sitting beside him, her fingers lying loosely in his. They tightened their grasp. “But my darling, I didn’t. I slept like a crocodile in the sun. I was exhausted with worry over you. Knowing you were all right and out of danger, I relaxed and made up for all the sleep I’d lost. I never raised an eyelid all night.”

“But l saw you, in the window. So did Miss Onatelli.” Miss Onatelli was the night nurse.

It was at that moment Sherry remembered the Woman on the balcony. “Did you see my face?”

“No. There was a cloud over the moon, but your figure was plain, and I didn’t dream it because Miss Onatelli saw you too.”

“What did I have on?”

“White?”

“Have you ever seen me in white?”

“Come to think of it, no — except once or twice on the balcony when you’ve always

run away from me.” Gio’s lip twisted. “It hurt my feelings — I didn’t mention it before because I was hurt. I thought you were evading me.”

“Gio — as if I could . . .” She kissed his hand and cradled it against her cheek. “But I’ve thought worse things of you. I’ve seen a woman in white coming in here. I thought maybe you had a mistress, or a mad wife — or —” She stopped short at the expression of shock on his face.

“That is why you were cold to me. But Sherry, how could you —”

“But I couldn’t help it. Listen —” She recounted the whole story. She kept nothing back, not even her misgivings, which in the light of the present circumstances and the love gleaming from his eyes sounded pretty silly.

When she had finished Gio looked serious. “It’s either a ghost or Beurio is up to something.”

“A ghost — I never thought of that.” Sherry remembered the cold feeling and the sensation of the energy being drained from her. “Oh, Gio, I wouldn’t like it to be a ghost.”

“Well, it could be Beurio’s girlfriend — or perhaps a crazy member of the De Quisce family he’s sheltering. It’s possible. These old houses hide strange things. There’s no use asking him. He’d only lie. Listen, Scamperino, stay in here tonight. You and I and Miss Onatelli. It’s her last night. We might as well make use of her. We’ll watch.”

“Oh, yes,” Sherry agreed, “and now while you nap I’ll investigate the balcony-climbing possibilities.”

When she returned later it was to report that nothing short of wings could get on or off the balcony except from the two bedrooms. The wings of the Villa had no connection with the balcony, which was only on the front façade.

“A mountain goat couldn’t make it, let alone a woman,” Sherry announced.

Miss Onatelli, imported from Rome, obviously didn’t approve of Sherry’s spending the night in her patient’s room. “It is rest that is needed.”

#

When the reason for her staying was explained, Miss Onatelli was still more disapproving, but she made no further protests. She even allowed herself to umpire a game of dominoes. But she was quite firm when it came to the time Gio should sleep.

“We will watch, but you must not lie awake,” she pronounced and turned out the light.

Sherry relaxed in a large chair big enough to be a couch in any ordinary home. After settling her patient for the night, Miss Onatelli sat in a chair beside Sherry. There was no sound in the room but their even breathing.

Sherry knew Gio was not asleep. She could feel his thoughts winging toward her and her love went forth to meet his. All her doubts of him were resolved and she was compietely happy once more. Curious for the explanation of the Woman on the balcony of course, but in an impersonal way now.

The hours wore on. The moonlight lay a great band of silver across the balcony. The soft-scented air drifted in like a caress. It was one of those moon-drenched Italian nights which are indescribably lovely and seem made for romance.

Sherry was thinking of Gio and how wonderful it would be when he was quite well again when she heard Miss Onatelli gasp and a sound of movement from the bed as Gio raised himself. Her eyes went at once to the window.

There was the Woman, the white draperies swirling about her as though they were made of mist. She was nearer, or the moonlight was more revealing, for Sherry could see her face more distinctly than on the previous times. The skin was camellia textured, and waxen pale, the eyes deep-set and sad, fringed with fear and a terrible yearning. The full lips trembled while the red-gold hair framed the face as old mahogany might one of Titian’s masterpieces. The Woman was a great beauty; she was also horribly distressed and full of longing. One graceful hand clutched at her slender throat.

Suddenly Sherry heard her own voice, strangely calm above the disordered beating of her heart . . . “What can I do for you? I am your friend.” Into the simple words she put a world of meaning.

The Woman half turned as though to leave, but hesitated.    .

Sherry spoke again. “I want to help you — because I know what love means, I want to help you — because I love there is a bond between us. Tell me what to do.”

Full-faced towards her now, the Woman gazed deep into Sherry’s eyes.

For a second it seemed to Sherry that the Woman was appraising her, and afterwards Gio and Miss Onatelli told her they had thought the same thing.

Then Sherry said, and the words seemed to come through her from some other volition than her own, “All those who love are one. So your sorrow is my sorrow. You are blameless, but if it were not so, your sin would be mine, and your repentance. Through me you are free. I do not quite know why except my love for Gio makes it so, enables me to give you peace.”

---

There was a long silence. During it a wonderful thing happened. The deep longing, the intensified yearning left the Woman’s face as though it were being wiped off with a sponge. The three people in the room watched the tragedy die out of the Woman’s eyes, saw torture leave them and peace take its place, a serenity that was beyond description.

Then a smile curved the Woman’s full lips, a smile first radiant with a deep inner joy, then a smile of gratitude directed to Sherry. At the same time the white slender hand tore at something on her neck. There was a tinkling sound as though some metallic object struck the stone of the balcony and then the Woman was gone — vanished into the night from which she had come. One minute she was there — the next there was nothing.

Sherry gave a little gasp, tried to move, but found she had no strength — an inertia possessed her unlike anything she had ever known. She wanted to call Gio, but she could make no sound. She was cold; the very blood seemed frozen in her veins. From far off she could hear Gio’s voice: “It was a ghost, there’s no other explanation.” And Miss Onatelli’s answer: “I shall never forget the pain fading from her face and the blessed, blessed peace that took its place.”

Sherry tried to describe her own feelings, but she could make no sound. Faintness swirled about her as the white draperies the Woman had worn had swirled — ebbed around her like a mist. She tried to pierce through the fog that cut her off from Gio. She took an uncertain step and fell heavily to the floor. The rest was blackness.

The sun was shining when she came to her senses, and Gio was sitting beside her bed holding her hand as she had done for him, the positions reversed. She smiled at him, and his face brightened as though it had been suddenly spotlighted.

“My darling,” he said. “My darling.”

“What happened?” she asked, and then she remembered. She sat up straight in bed. “The Woman on the balcony! She was a ghost?”

“Yes, my love, and you saved her from whatever curse she was doomed with. You — or  someone speaking through you. Do you know you have been unconscious three days? Nurse Onatelli and I have looked after you.”

“Three days?”

“Three days! Lie down, beloved,” Gio bent over her, “and I will tell you everything. The doctor said when you came to you would be well again and should know what happened. He wasn’t sure you’d remember.”

She lay back, still holding her husband’s hand. “The Woman vanished. I tried to speak. I couldn’t, I was cold. I guess I fainted.”

“You lapsed into a coma. It was the strain, and the fact that occult forces had used you to release her from torment, or your own innate goodness. We’ll never know which, but I do know about her.”

“Tell me, Gio.” Sherry was full of impatience to share his knowledge.

“She was Bianca Torello and she was the great cardinal’s mistress. The Cardinal De Quisce who built this villa — for her. She was young and beautiful. He was old and corrupt. Her father was his friend. He told the Count Torello he would put his daughter in a convent, that she had an avocation. Instead, he brought her here for his pleasure. He lavished everything upon her but she hated him. She had truly wanted to be a nun, but he made her a courtesan.”

“How horrible — where did you learn all this, Gio?”

“From the estate man. She’s haunted the villa for centuries. Of course he didn’t tell me until I broke him down.”

“What’s the rest?” Unerringly Sherry knew there was more.

“There was a young gardener here at the Villa who worshipped Madonna Bianca from afar. Gradually she got to know this  and her warm nature and her misery responded to the lad’s adoration. There was nothing wrong between them. Bianca was truly pure at heart, but she was unhappy and lonely, a sad captive. The Cardinal was away much of the time, so she and the boy grew to be friends. They often sat in the rose garden and talked together. One day the Cardinal found them so and being an evil man saw evil where there was none. He sent her to the Madonna Chamber under guard. He had the boy tortured in his own chamber for better enjoyment as he lay in bed.

“Bianca broke out of her room, ran along the balcony, and burst into the Cardinal’s room just as the boy breathed his last. His frail body could bear no more. Bianca was like a mad woman. She cursed the Cardinal and the De Quisces for all time to come. Then the Cardinal, in his turn, did some currsing too. He said she’d have to walk the balcony until love expiated her crime.

“She shrieked there had been no crime but his, whereat he picked her up and threw her over the balcony rail to her death.

“He was far gone in wine, sadistically aroused by the torture, but later when he went to see her crumpled, lifeless body, still beautiful in death, he wept bitter tears and would ·have undone his curse.

“But it was too late. Words spoken with force have power. The Cardinal knew that. In those days they were closer to elemental things. But to make amends he hung his great jeweled cross about her neck and gave her a fine funeral and a tomb.”

Sherry was hanging on his words. “What happened after that?” she asked eagerly.

“She haunted the balcony, and, some say, drove the Cardinal towards insanity. At any rate, he died raving that the villa would know no peace ‘til the cross came to it again. For years the haunting has continued. The Woman in white, or poor Bianca Torello, roamed the balcony, miserably unhappy, frightening everyone. The De Quisces had to put up with her and her tragic agony, but none of the other tenants could. That’s why the villa changed hands so frequently and was so cheap. But the curse has been lifted now, by you, my darling — Bianca Torello walks no more.”

“You haven’t seen her since?”

“No, and I am sure no one will ever see the Woman on the Balcony again.”

“But why? I did nothing. I only wasn’t afraid of her and spoke words that seemed to be put into my mouth.”

“By the Cardinal, the young gardener who loved her, or your own sweet self?” Gio looked at her gravely. “We will never know, but she hasn’t been seen since, and Beurio says that has never happened before.

“But I have another way of knowing that her poor, unhappy ghost has found peace, even if I hadn’t seen it on her face.” Gio smiled and broke off, then continued on a different key, “Tell me, Scamperino, does all this make you hate the villa?”

---

Sherry looked out at the balcony. “No, I love it — and I feel no fear now — only that sense of peace.”

“Then you won’t mind if I buy it? I want it, and I, too, feel that as always happens in time, evil is purged, and only good remains. It is so here.”

Sherry inclined her head. She was completely happy. “I’ve always wanted the villa to be ours from that first minute I saw it. But how, Gio, do we know she’s gone for good, that there is only peace?”

“Because she left you a present . . .” Gio dug into his pocket and held out his hand.

On it lay a gleaming golden cross set with precious stones: hanging from it a broken golden chain.

“The Cardinal’s Cross. She gave it to you, my love. She pulled it from her neck. I found it on the balcony. The cross that brought peace to the villa.”

Sherry took the cross into her own hands. It was a magnificent thing from another world. As she held it she knew a feeling of release and freedom from all fear — and the prescience of future happiness.

Gio was speaking again. “There was a drawing of the cross in a history of the De Quisces. It is identical. I am sure if we exhumed Bianca Torello’s body we would not find the cross that was buried with it.”

Sherry raised the cross and laid it on her neck where she would wear it always. “And I am sure too,” she said slowly, “that we would find on her face that blessed expression of peace.”

---

Host Commentary

…aaaaand welcome back. That was “The Woman on the Balcony” by Dorothy Quick, and if you enjoyed that, she had nearly two dozen short stories published through the 30s and 40s, most of which are in the public domain and available in online scans of Weird Tales at the Internet Archive.

Millions of words have been written down the centuries on what love is and is not, and I don’t pretend to have a better answer than the historical luminaries who have opined on the topic; but then, I don’t think anyone can have the answer on what love is, and instead, as a uniting human experience, it can only really be described with a multitude of perspectives, and each new opinion illuminates it a little more. My thoughts on it are not a static thing: for a long time I have felt that love was infinite, that the heart always expanded with new emotion as new people, or pets, came into my life; I was almost too late in learning that although the emotion may be infinite, love is not about the feeling but about the time and the efforts you give for it, and that time is only finite, and choosing to spend that limited resource on someone is the true expression of love. And, ultimately, I think love is the intimacy of trust: of trusting someone else’s intentions, of trusting someone else’s faith, of trusting someone else to hold your heart and your secrets with delicate hands. Love is inseparable from vulnerability.

---

As part of our 15th anniversary celebrations, we’re asking you to send in your favourite stories from our archive: if you’ve got a suggestion, go to our website

and look for the pinned post up top for details. This week, Brandon Case is recommending episode 774, “Yung Lich and the Dance of Death”, saying: “It’s a wonderfully heartfelt and lyrical story!

Alex uses her flair for beautiful and surprising language to create a truly lovable character in Yung Lich. The way he struggles with fulfilling an artistic destiny abbreviated by his death, while trying to come to terms with his absentee creator, and being out of phase with human society… it was achingly relatable both as a writer and introvert.

Plus, Eric Valdes does an excellent job narrating! Not only does he bring Yung Lich to life, and not only does he actually rap—he creates a layered sound design that truly captures the magic in The Dance of Death.

All told, it was a tremendously enjoyable episode!”. Thank you, Brandon!