There are certain things which can never be accurately described--things so shadowy, so fitful, so dependent on the mood of the moment, both in the audience and the actor, that analysis and representation are equally at fault. And flirting is one of them. What is flirting? Who can define or determine? It is more serious than talking nonsense and not so serious as making love; it is not chaff and it is not feeling; it means something more than indifference and yet something less than affection; it binds no one; it commits no one though it raises expectations in the individual and sets society on the look-out for results; it is a plaything in the hands of the experienced but a deadly weapon against the breast of the unwary; and it is a thing so vague, so protean, that the most accurate measurer of moral values would be puzzled to say where it exactly ends and where serious intentions begin. But again we ask: What is flirting? What constitutes its essence? What makes the difference between it and chaff on the one hand, and it and love-making on the other? Has it a cumulative power, and, according to the old saying of many a pickle making a mickle, does a long series of small flirtings make up a concrete whole of love? or is it like an unmortared heap of bricks, potential utilities if conditions were changed, but valueless as things are? The man who would be able to reduce flirting to a definite science, who could analyze its elements and codify its laws, would be doing infinite service to his generation; but we fear that this is about as difficult as finding the pot of gold under the end of a rainbow, or catching small birds with a pinch of salt.