"I don't know whether I do or not. That's not what I think about first." Though they had not yet reached the line of taxicabs, he paused to make an explanation. "Suppose you were inventing a machine and had got it pretty well fitted together, only that you couldn't make it work. And suppose, one day, you found the very part that was missing—the thing that would make it run. You'd know you'd have to have that one thing, wouldn't you? You'd have to have it—or your life wouldn't be worth while."
"I never heard any other man talk like that."
"Listen, Jennie. There are men and men. They'll go into two big bunches. To one kind women are like whisky—some better than others, but all good. If they can't have Mary, Susan'll do, and when they're tired of Susan they'll run after Ann. That's one kind of fellow, and he's in the great majority. They're polygamous by nature, those chaps. I suppose the Lord made them so. Anyhow, as far as I can see—and I've seen pretty far—they can't help themselves." He drew a long breath. "Then there's another kind."
If Jennie listened with attention, it was not because she was interested in him, but in Hubert Wray. Hubert had more than once said things of the same kind. He had declared male constancy to be outside the possibilities of flesh and blood, and, with her preference for cave men, Jennie had agreed with him. That is, she had agreed with him as to everyone but himself. Others could take their pleasure where and as they found it; but she could not conceive of any man loving her, or of herself loving any man, unless it was for life. On the subject of constancy or inconstancy, this was her sole reservation.
"You'll think me an awful chump, Jennie, but I'm that other kind."
She threw him a sidelong glance of some perplexity.
"You mean the kind that—"
"I'm not polygamous," he declared, as one who confessed a criminal tendency. "There it is, laid out flat. I'm—" He hesitated before using the term lest she might not understand it. "There's a word for my kind," he went on, tenderly. "It's monogamous."
She made a little sound of dismay at the strangeness, it almost seemed the indecency, of the syllables.
"Yes; I thought you might never have heard it," he pursued, in the same tender strain, "but it means the opposite of polygamous. A polygamous guy wants to marry all the wives he can make love to. A one-wife chap like me asks for nothing so much as to be true to the girl he loves. I'm that kind, Jennie."