Man's esteem for virtues which he does not always practise himself, is
thus responsible, in part at least, for the existence of modern
coyness. Other factors, however, aided its growth, among them man's
fickleness. If a girl did not say nay (when she would rather say yes),
and hold back, hesitate, and delay, the suitor would in many cases
suck the honey from her lips and flit away to another flower.
Cumulative experience of man's sensual selfishness has taught her to
be slow in yielding to his advances. Experience has also taught women
that men are apt to value favors in proportion to the difficulty of
winning them, and the wisest of them have profited by the lesson.
Callimachus wrote, two hundred and fifty years before Christ, that his
love was "versed in pursuing what flies (from it), but flits past what
lies in its mid path"--a conceit which the poets have since echoed a
thousand times. Another very important thing that experience taught
women was that by deferring or withholding their caresses and smiles
they could make the tyrant man humble, generous, and gallant. Girls
who do not throw themselves away on the first man who happens along,
also have an advantage over others who are less fastidious and coy,
and by transmitting their disposition to their daughters they give it
greater vogue. Female coyness prevents too hasty marriages, and the
girls who lack it often live to repent their shortcomings at leisure.
Coyness prolongs the period of courtship and, by keeping the suitor in
suspense and doubt, it develops the imaginative, sentimental side of
love.