Page:The Blacker the Berry - Thurman - 1929.djvu/191

 to hear her and change the conversation. The only visible physical reaction would be a slight narrowing of the eyes, as if he were trying not to wince from the pain of some inner hurt.

Once she had suggested marriage, and had been shocked when Alva told her that to him the marriage ceremony seemed a waste of time. He had already been married twice, and he hadn’t even bothered to obtain a divorce from his first wife before acquiring number two. On hearing this, Emma Lou had urged him to tell her more about these marital experiments, and after a little coaxing, he had done so, very impassively and very sketchily, as if he were relating the experiences of another. He told her that he had really loved his first wife, but that she was such an essential polygamous female that he had been forced to abdicate and hand her over to the multitudes. According to Alva, she had been as vain as Braxton, and as fundamentally dependent upon flattery. She could do without three square meals a day, but she couldn’t do without her contingent of mealy-mouthed admirers, all eager to outdo one another in the matter of compliments. One man could never have satisfied her, not that she was a nymphomaniac with abnormal physical appetites, but because she wanted attention, and the more men she had around her, the more attention she could receive. She hadn’t been able to