possesses “high biological and psychological significance,” being rooted in the antagonism between the sexual instinct and inborn modesty.  He refers to the roe, who runs away from the stag—­but in a circle. (Groos, Die Spiele der Menschen, 1899, p. 339; also the same author’s Die Spiele der Thiere, pp. 288 et seq.) Another example of coquetry is furnished by the female kingfisher (Alcedo ispida), which will spend all the morning in teasing and flying away from the male, but is careful constantly to look back, and never to let him out of her sight. (Many examples are given by Buechner, in Liebe und Liebesleben in der Tierwelt.) Robert Mueller (Sexualbiologie, p. 302) emphasizes the importance of coquetry as a lure to the male.

“It is quite true,” a lady writes to me in a private letter, “that ‘coquetry is a poor thing,’ and that every milkmaid can assume it, but a woman uses it principally in self-defence, while she is finding out what the man himself is like.”  This is in accordance with the remark of Marro, that modesty enables a woman “to put lovers to the test, in order to select him who is best able to serve the natural ends of love.”  It is doubtless the necessity for this probationary period, as a test of masculine qualities, which usually leads a woman to repel instinctively a too hasty and impatient suitor, for, as Arthur Macdonald remarks, “It seems to be instinctive in young women to reject the impetuous lover, without the least consideration of his character, ability, and fitness.”

This essential element in courtship, this fundamental attitude of pursuer and pursued, is clearly to be seen even in animals and savages; it is equally pronounced in the most civilized men and women, manifesting itself in crude and subtle ways alike.  Shakespeare’s Angelo, whose virtue had always resisted the temptations of vice, discovered at last that

            “modesty may more betray our sense
    Than woman’s lightness.”

“What,” asked the wise Montaigne, “is the object of that virginal shame, that sedate coldness, that severe countenance, that pretence of not knowing things which they understand better than we who teach them, except to increase in us the desire to conquer and curb, to trample under our appetite, all that ceremony and those obstacles?  For there is not only matter for pleasure, but for pride also, in ruffling and debauching that soft sweetness and infantine modesty."[14] The masculine attitude in the face of feminine coyness may easily pass into a kind of sadism, but is nevertheless in its origin an innocent and instinctive impulse.  Restif de la Bretonne, describing his own shame and timidity as a pretty boy whom the girls would run after and kiss, adds:  “It is surprising that at the same time I would imagine the pleasure I should have in embracing a girl who resisted, in inspiring her with timidity, in making her flee and