The Pace that Kills by Edgar Saltus

That night the stars, dim and distant, were scattered like specks of frost on some wide, blue window-pane. At intervals a shiver of wheels crunching the resistant snow stirred the lethargy of the street, and at times a rumble accentuated by the chill of winter mounted gradually, and passed on in diminishing vibrations. Within, a single light, burning scantily, diffused through the room the drowsiness of a spell. In the bed was Justine, her eyes dilated, her face attenuated and pinched. One hand that lay on the coverlid was clinched so tightly that the nails must have entered the flesh. Presently she moaned, and a trim little woman issued from a corner with the noiseless wariness of a rat. As she passed before the night-light, the silhouette of a giantess, fabulously obese, jumped out and vanished from the wall. For a moment she scrutinized her charge, burrowing into her, as it were, with shrewd yet kindly eyes.

Again a moan escaped the sufferer, the wail of one whose agony is lancinating -- one that ascended in crescendos and terminated in a cry of such utter helplessness, and therewith of such insistent pain, that the nurse caught the hand that lay on the coverlid, and unlocking the fingers stroked and held it in her own. "There, dear heart -- there, I know."