“But he doesn't, because it isn't. Love isn't strong enough to save people from unhappiness through each other's faults. Do you suppose that so many married people are unhappy in each other because they don't love each other? No; it's because they do love each other that their faults are such a mutual torment. If they were indifferent, they wouldn't mind each other's faults. Perhaps that's the reason why there are so many American divorces; if they didn't care, like Europeans, who don't marry for love, they could stand it.” “Then the moral is,” said Mrs. Pasmer, at her lightest through the surrounding gravity, “that as all Americans marry for love, only Americans who have been very good ought to get married.” “I'm not sure that the have-been goodness is enough either,” said Mrs. Brinkley, willing to push it to the absurd. “You marry a man's future as well as his past.” “Dear me! You are terribly exigeante, Mrs. Brinkley,” said Mrs. Pasmer. “One can afford to be so--in the abstract,” answered Mrs. Brinkley. They all stopped talking and looked at John Munt, who was coming toward them, and each felt a longing to lay the matter before him. There was probably not a woman among them but had felt more, read more, and thought more than John Munt, but he was a man, and the mind of a man is the court of final appeal for the wisest women. Till some man has pronounced upon their wisdom, they do not know whether it is wisdom or not. Munt drew up his chair, and addressed himself to the whole group through Mrs. Pasmer: “We are thinking of getting up a little picnic to-morrow.” XIV. The day of the picnic struggled till ten o'clock to peer through the fog that wrapt it with that remote damp and coolness and that nearer drouth and warmth which some fogs have. The low pine groves hung full of it, and it gave a silvery definition to the gossamer threads running from one grass spear to another in spacious networks over the open levels of the old fields that stretch back from the bluff to the woods. At last it grew thinner, somewhere over the bay; then you could see the smooth water through it; then it drifted off in ragged fringes before a light breeze: when you looked landward again it was all gone there, and seaward it had gathered itself in a low, dun bank along the horizon. It was the kind of fog that people interested in Campobello admitted as apt to be common there, but claimed as a kind of local virtue when it began to break away. They said that it was a very dry fog, not like Newport, and asked you to notice that it did not wet you at all.