"Will you go into the cabin? or will you have a seat here?" she heard Winthrop say. Mechanically she looked about for one. He brought a chair and placed her in it, and she sat down; choosing rather the open air and free sky than any shut-up place, and his neighbourhood rather than where he was not; but with a dulled and impassive state of feeling that refused to take up anything, past, present or future. It was not rest, it was not relief, though there was a seeming of rest about it. She knew then it would not last. It was only a little lull between storms; the enforced quiet of wearied and worn-out powers. She sat mazily taking in the sunlight, and the view of the sunlighted earth and water, the breath of the sweeping fresh air, the creaking of the sloop's cordage, in the one consciousness that Winthrop kept his place at her side all this time. How she thanked him for that! though she could not ask him to sit down, nor make any sort of a speech about it. Down went the sun, and the shadows and the sunlight were swept away together; and yet fresher came the sweet wind. It was a sort of consolation to Elizabeth, that her distress gave Winthrop a right and a reason to attend upon her; she had had all along a vague feeling of it, and the feeling was very present now. It was all of comfort she could lay hold of; and she clutched at it with even then a foreboding sense of the desolation there would be when that comfort was gone. She had it now; she had it, and she held it; and she sat there in her chair on the deck in a curious half stupor, half quiet, her mind clinging to that one single point where it could lean. There came a break-up however. Supper was declared to be ready; and though nobody but Winthrop attended the skipper's table, Elizabeth was obliged to take some refreshments of her own, along with a cup of the sloop's tea, which most certainly she would have taken from no hand but the one that presented it to her. And after it, Elizabeth was so strongly advised to go to the cabin and take some rest, that she could not help going; resting, she had no thought of. Her companions were of easier mind; for they soon addressed themselves to such sleeping conveniencies as the little cabin could boast. Miss Haye watched them begin and end their preparations and bestow themselves in resting positions to sleep; and then drawing a breath of comparative rest herself, she placed herself just within the cabin threshold, on the floor, where she could look out and have a good view of the deck through the partly open door.