ry of heliotrope, and phlox, and mignonette, and
afternoons quiet except for the sound of bees.

"CONTACT!"

BY FRANCES NOYES HART[8]

[Footnote 8: Frances Newbold Noyes, in _Pictorial Review_ for
December, 1920.]

The first time she heard it was in the silk-hung and flower-scented
peace of the little drawing-room in Curzon Street. His sister Rosemary
had wanted to come up to London to get some clothes--Victory clothes
they called them in those first joyous months after the armistice,
and decked their bodies in scarlet and silver, even when their poor
hearts went in black--and Janet had been urged to leave her own drab
boarding-house room to stay with the forlorn small butterfly. They had
struggled through dinner somehow, and Janet had finished her coffee
and turned the great chair so that she could watch the dancing fire
(it was cool for May), her cloudy brown head tilted back against the
rose-red cushion, shadowy eyes half closed, idle hands linked across
her knees. She looked every one of her thirty years--and mortally
tired--and careless of both facts. But she managed an encouraging
smile at the sound of Rosemary's shy, friendly voice at her elbow.
"Janet, these are yours, aren't they? Mummy found them with some
things last week, and I thought that you might like to have them."

She drew a quick breath at the sight of the shabby packet.

"Why, yes," she said evenly. "That's good of you, Rosemary. Thanks a
lot."

"That's all right," murmured Rosemary diffidently. "Wouldn't you
like something to read? There's a most frightfully exciting Western
novel----"

The smile took on a slightly ironical edge. "Don't bother about me,
my dear. You see, I come from that frightfully exciting West, and I
know all about the pet rattlesnakes and the wildly Bohemian cowboys.
Run along and play with your book--I'll be off to bed in a few
minutes."

Rosemary retired obediently to the deep chair in the corner, and
with the smile gone but the irony still hovering, she slipped the
cord off the packet. A meager and sorry enough array--words had
never been for her the swift, docile servitors that most people
found them. But the thin gray sheet in her fingers started out
gallantly enough--"Beloved." Beloved! She leaned far forward,
dropping it with deft precision into the glowing pocket of embers.
What next? This was more like--it began "Dear Captain Langdon" in
the small, contained, even writing that was her pride, and