These opposites became fast friends. Often they would talk over the refectory fire—a wood fire in an ancient grate, which cast the right mediæval glow over the polished floor and the dark wainscotting—long after the others were in their cubicles. Nurse Ella had the greatest scorn for the conventual side of St. Hilda's, which Gwynneth would defend warmly, while her heart admitted more than her lips; the discussion would ramify, and become animated on both sides; then all at once Nurse Ella would look at her watch, and no persuasion would induce her to stay another minute. Gwynneth could have sat up half the night, and would plead in vain for ten minutes more; it seldom took Nurse Ella as many seconds to suit her action to her word. She said she would do a thing, and did it; that was Nurse Ella's principle in life.
So there was no exchange of confidences between these two, both reticent natures, and neither unduly inquisitive about the other's affairs. Gwynneth only knew that her friend's married life had been a very short one; for her own part, she had said nothing to let Nurse Ella suppose that she had herself been even asked in marriage. But one night they were speaking of another nurse, who had left St. Hilda's that day, in floods of tears, to be married the following week.
"If I felt like that," Gwynneth had declared, "I wouldn't be married at all."
Nurse Ella looked up quickly, her glasses flaming in the firelight. "What, not after you had given your word?" said she.
"Certainly not, if I felt I had made a mistake." Gwynneth was staring into the fire.
"You would break your solemn promise in a thing like that?" the other persisted.
"Better one promise than two lives," replied Gwynneth, with oracular brevity. Nurse Ella watched her in sidelong astonishment.
"It's easy to talk, my dear! I believe you are the last person who would do anything so dishonourable."
"I don't call it dishonourable."
"But it is, to break your word."