CHAPTER XXXIV

FLIRTS AND COQUETTES

The difference between the two--Points of resemblance.

There is a great difference between the flirt and the coquette. The flirt accepts, even invites, your attentions, without expecting intentions. The coquette is a woman who gives you a promissory note with a firm intention of dishonouring her signature. Just as the prude often says No when she means Yes, the coquette whispers Yes all the time meaning No. The flirt promises nothing. She has nothing to refuse, because she does not allow you to ask for anything. She does not compromise herself in any way. She says neither Yes nor No. She encourages you to go on. You say to yourself, 'Will it be Yes or No? Who knows? Perhaps Yes, perhaps No.'

The coquette is generally a cold-hearted, cold-blooded woman, as perfectly sure of herself as those famous Mexican horsemen who can ride at full speed toward a precipice and stop suddenly dead on the edge of it. The coquette has no capacity for love; she does not seek love, but admiration and homage only. Unlike the flirt, she lacks cheerfulness and humour. To obtain admiration and boast of a new conquest she will risk even her reputation, compromise herself; yet her virtue is in safe keeping, for she has neither heart nor passion. In the comedy of love the coquette is the villain of the play.

The coquette uses man as she does her dresses: she likes to be seen with a new one every day. She kills for the sake of killing. She hunts, but does not eat the game she brings down. She plays on man's vanity to satisfy hers. The moment she has received a man's homage she will leave him to occupy herself with one who has refused it to her. She is dull and dreary. She may be as beautiful as you like, she is never lovable. She should be shunned like the card-sharper, whom she resembles all the more that against your good money she has nothing but counterfeit coin.

The flirt, on the contrary, is cheerful, jolly, often full of fun, and if you can make up your mind to accept her for what she is worth, she may help you pass a very pleasant time. She is not serious, and she does not want you to take her seriously. She is honest. She wants fun, innocent fun. The coquette tries to lead you as far as she wishes you to go; the flirt does not lead you any further than you wish to go. And it may be added that, while flirts have often been known to make very good wives, coquettes have invariably proved detestable ones.

Winthrop was helplessly wrong when he said, 'A woman without coquetry is as insipid as a rose without scent, champagne without sparkle, or corned beef without mustard,' unless he meant (which he did not) to use the French adjective, and not the noun, and say that a coquette is a woman who, by the care she bestows on her dress and general appearance and many other ways, knows how to make herself attractive and show herself in the most advantageous light.

The French language expresses the difference to a nicety. The word as an adjective is complimentary, but certainly not as a noun. _Elle est coquette_ means 'she dresses very elegantly, and has very winning manners,' whereas _C'est une coquette_ means 'she is a coquette,' that is to say, 'she tries to fascinate for the mere sake of fascinating.'

The coquette plays on man's vanity and makes a fool of him. The flirt displays her accomplishments and personal charms either to make you have a pleasant time with her, or, when more serious, to lead you on to an offer of marriage, which she will honestly accept, often with the best results for yourself.

It is only when you say of a woman that she is a 'desperate flirt' that you may come to the conclusion that she is a coquette. Of course, when the flirt is a married woman, she is a coquette; but when she is a young girl, I would call her a very harmless person. On the other hand, in opposition to that epithet of harmless, the adjective that is most commonly coupled with the word 'coquette' is not 'harmless,' but 'heartless.'

The word 'flirt' comes from the French _fleureter_, which means to go from flower to flower, to touch lightly; but although the word is of French origin, the thing itself is not French. Flirtation is a pastime which is most essentially English. We do not flirt in France; we are more serious than that in love-affairs. After all, flirtation is trifling with love, and that game would be a dangerous one to play with a Frenchman. A woman who flirts would pass in France for giddy, if not worse. She knows her countryman well, and is aware what she would expose herself to if she flirted with him.

The English girl in flirting does not play with fire. Englishmen are reserved, cold. The customs of the country grant liberty to the women, and they accept flirtation for what it is worth. The worst they might say of a girl who flirted with them would be, 'She is an awful flirt,' with a mixed expression of pity and contempt. An English girl who has had a good time at a party, a picnic, a ball, can say, 'I have had such a flirtation!' Why, she could say that to her own mother, and if that mother was still fairly young and good-looking, she might answer, 'And so have I.'

I take the American woman to be too intelligent--I had almost said too intellectual--to enjoy that childish pastime.

I hate the coquette and somewhat pity, if not despise, the flirt. I love straightforwardness. I admire that woman who blooms in the shade, who is earnest in her affections, and who waits until she is in love to allow the curtain to rise; then who honestly, devotedly, straightforwardly, goes through the whole comedy.

In everything I hate imitations. If I cannot get the real article, I do without it.