all of us. You're giving them to me. The day is likely to be fine and
settled, and I'd recommend your catching the 8:30 train. I shall have my
full load in the car. And more, if I have to take along Helga. Try to reach
us by one, or a quarter past."

Mrs. Phillips had lately taken on a house among the sand dunes beyond the
state line. This singular region had recently acquired so wide a reputation
for utter neglect and desolation that--despite its distance from town,
whether in miles or in hours--no one could quite afford to ignore it.
Picnics, pageants, encampments and excursions all united in proclaiming its
remoteness, its silence, its vacuity. Along the rim of ragged slopes which
put a term to the hundreds of miles of water that spread from the north,
people tramped, bathed, canoed, motored and week-ended. Within a few
seasons Duneland had acquired as great a reputation for "prahlerische
Dunkelheit"--for ostentatious obscurity--as ever was enjoyed even by
Schiller's Wallenstein. "Lovers of Nature" and "Friends of the Landscape"
moved through its distant and inaccessible purlieus in squads and cohorts.
Everybody had to spend there at least one Sunday in the summer season.
There were enthusiasts whose interest ran from March to November. There
were fanatics who insisted on trips thitherward in January. And there were
one or two super-fanatics--ranking ahead even of the fishermen and the
sand-diggers--who clung to that weird and changing region the whole year
through.

Medora Phillips' house was several miles beyond the worst of the hurly-
burly. There were no tents in sight, even in August. Nor was the honk of
the motor-horn heard even during the most tumultuous Sundays. The spot was
harder to reach than most others along the twenty miles of nicked and
ragged brim which helped enclose the wide blue area of the Big Water, but
was better worth while when you got there. Her little tract lay beyond the