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continue to mourn the deaths of my late wife and baby daughter until my last hour upon this earth, but I have ceased doing so from atop a saloon stool. Your mother, Miss Maggie, believes me when I say this. Perhaps in time you’ll come to believe me too, and then things cannot help but improve between us.”
    Osborne observed Maggie and his daughter Molly as they exchanged perfunctory morning greetings on the sidewalk. He smiled as Molly, lifting her head, and, seeing him standing at the window, waved good-bye. He waved back, though Maggie refused to be witness to any of it, staring ahead, her face set and unemotive. Then the two girls moved along, Molly hooking both of her arms around Maggie’s left arm to effect a lively bonhomie, whether the recipient chose to subscribe to it or not.
    Michael Osborne had cleared his calendar of patients for that day. Today—the entire day was reserved for Clara Barton. Because she was certain to say yes. This he made himself believe. And he was certain they should spend the remainder of the day celebrating her acceptance of his proposal, perhaps by taking themselves to North Beach, where the pounding surf would applaud their decision to be together forever thereafter, and perhaps even replace at long last the mental picture of his late wife, in that very same spot, walking herself into a watery tomb.
    ___________
    Maggie Barton and Molly Osborne had just turned the corner into Bush Street when they were hailed by a bubbly young woman with singing eyes and a massive coil of black hair held upon her head by a superfluity of tortoise-shell hairpins. Whereas Maggie and Molly wore the sedate and understated “uniform” of the female department store salesclerk—starched skirt and soft-toned shirtwaist (the only permissible flash of color being found upon their nearly matching pink-dotted neckties)—the girl beckoning their attention was rigged in an ornately embroidered orange-and-gold men’s Mandarin jacket and a fringed Chinese shawl that had been twisted and turned so as to become a nest for her bobbing head. “Do you like it?” she asked, modeling her rig with palms down and projecting out to the sides like those of a posing mannequin—especially one from ancient Egypt. “It’s Reggie’s jacket, but I made it my own. It’s to grab people’s attention so I can slip them a printed advertisement for his lecture Thursday night.” The girl handed a piece of paper to Maggie. “You two must share it, because I haven’t an inexhaustible supply. Do you think you’ll be able to come?”
    Molly looked up from the paper. “I’m sorry, but I have my stenography class at that hour.”
    The girl, whose name was Mirabella, was on friendly and familiar terms with both Maggie and Molly due to the fact that the three of them had attended grammar school together. She turned to Maggie with the same bright and hopeful look. “What about you , Mag?”
    â€œI’ll try ,” fibbed Maggie, “but I cannot imagine your new husband will have many others in attendance. ‘The Extinction of the Human Race’ is a very depressing topic for this month’s ‘Lecture for the Masses.’”
    â€œAnd yet it’s something to which we should all be giving serious thought. Futurists tell us that humankind may not survive this new century—that the tragedy of Galveston was only the first of many such devastating catastrophes that will, in the end, wipe all human life from the planet.”
    Maggie handed the paper announcement back to Mirabella. “You and your newlywed professor husband sound like those sandwich-board-wearing fanatics who stand on Market Street and preach the end of the world. You dismiss the fact that there are a good many others—like that Mr. Bellamy whom Ruth’s been reading—who believe quite the opposite. By the way, Mirabella: what does your husband