devoted lover for half
a day, coming and calling him, and then taking to flight. But
she never lets him out of her sight the while, looking back as
she flies, and measuring her speed, and wheeling back when he
suddenly gives up the pursuit.[246]

There is here a rapid shifting of attention between organic impulse
to pair and organic dread of pairing, until an equilibrium is reached,
which is not essentially different from the case, in human society,
of that woman who, "whispering, 'I will ne'er consent,' consented." In
either case, the minimum that it is necessary to assume is an organic
hesitancy, though in the case of woman social hesitancy may play even
the greater role. Pairing is in its nature a seizure, and the coquetry
of the female goes back, perhaps, to an instinctive aversion to being
seized.

Our understanding of the nature of modesty is here further assisted
by the consideration that the same stimulus does not produce the same
reaction under all circumstances, but, on the contrary, may result in
totally contrary effects. A show of fight may produce either anger or
fear; social attention may gratify us from one person and irritate us
from another; or the attentions of the same person may annoy us today
and please us tomorrow. Mere movement is, to take another instance,
one of the most powerful stimuli in animal life; and, if we examine
its meaning among animals, we find that the same movement may have
different meanings in terms of sex. If the female runs, the movement
attracts the notice of the male, and the movement is a sexual
stimulus. Or the movement may be a movement of avoidance--a
running-away; and in this way the female may secure contrary
desires by the same general type of activity. Or, on the other hand,
not-running is a condition of pairing, and is also a means of avoiding
the attention of the male. Similarly modesty has a twofold meaning in
sexual life. In appearance it is an avoidance of sexual attention, and
at many moments it is an avoidance in fact. But we have seen in the
case of the birds that the avoidance is, at the pairing season, only
a part of the process of working up the organism to the nervous pitch
necessary for pairing.

But without going farther into the question of the psychology of
wooing, it is evident that very delicate attention to behavior is
necessary to be always attractive and never disgusting to the opposite
sex, and even the most serious attention