Three hours later Roger got off the train, the sole passenger for the windswept little wooden box upon the dunes. To the north and east the dun sand swelled to mounds and rounded hummocks, held from their eternal drifting by bunches of coarse, gray grass. Across the narrow bay, low hills, dense and black with chaparral, each guarding at its base a tiny white beach, ran westward to the sea, beating on the rocky coast in long, sobbing protest against the lashing wind.
In the vast, clean loneliness of sand and wind and sky, a fear that had touched him on the way up that Anne might think it strange for him to appear suddenly like this, dissolved. The silent emptiness absorbed the misunderstanding of motive, and Roger knew that if Anne did not wish the position she would not think him intrusive. He easily found the half-obliterated wagon-road Hilda had described and took it across the dunes.
As the front gate creaked on its sagging hinges, Barbara Saunders rose from the floor, where she and Anne had been trying to force a faded blue dimity to contain a yard more material than it had ever had.
"I simply will not wear the thing as it is. Janet can say what she likes—she doesn't care what she wears—but I've been to six Quarterlies in it—and I've reached my limit."
The gate slammed and Barbara turned to the window.
"Anne! It's a man!"
Anne looked up, still puzzling over the impossibilities of the faded dimity. "Do you know, Bab, I believe if we ripped the whole thing and turned the top to the bottom and gored it, we could take all the scraps left over and——"
"Come here," Bab whispered as if the person below could hear through the glass. "He doesn't look like an agent. Who on earth——"
Anne came and stood beside her. With nose pressed to the glass she could just see the top of Roger's hat. A loud knock echoed through the house.
"In a hurry, rather, isn't he? Who——" Bab turned. "Why! Anne! Do you know him?"