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