The Garden of Swords by Max Pemberton

She slept heavily and without dreams. Exhausted nature drank at the well of sleep, and, thus refreshed, gave her new gifts of strength and thought when the dawn came. She had suffered from no malady but malady of the mind; and now that the crisis was past and all the long days of anxiety ended in this day of sure calamity, her mind came back to her and taught her to reason as she had not reasoned since the day of Woerth. Calmly, quietly she reckoned with her position. There were facts she would hide no longer from herself -- the fact of her estrangement from France; of the pity she gave to the soldiers of France when pride of them should have been her impulse; of her affection for the country she had left and for the English friends she had made in Strasburg. That affection demanded no loosening of the bonds which bound her still in love to Edmond. She knew that her love was stronger than all else, just as it was independent of all else. She did not believe that the misfortunes of their lives were irreparable. Misfortune, indeed, should be to them the beginning of a new understanding and a truer comradeship. Edmond would have need of her when Strasburg fell. She would give of her pity a generous offering.

If thus she could reason calmly, none the less was her anxiety unceasing. The very doubt as to what was happening to those she thought of in that city of fire and terror aided her to a recovery of her bodily strength. She rose from her bed by the very desire to rise. The week that succeeded her recovery was a week of questions unceasing to those who visited her -- the abbe, the American doctor, old Richard Watts. They evaded her questions or answered them to no purpose. Even old Watts could bring her no tidings to satisfy her.