"Kill me, darling, kill me..."Ellen's plea was so pitiable that Suzan wept as she murmured over and over again, "What have I done?What have I done?Please forgive me, my love, please forgive me!God, forgive me!"

The doctor suppressed an urge to scream.What now sat staring at her through rheumy eyes was not the Ellen she knew, but a hideous, shrunken, shriveled shell of a woman, her flesh paper-thin and intersected with swollen blue-gray veins, her facial features barely visible ...