self-love, they nod to their reflections in the mirror, and invent a new way of doing the hair, or a new and sprightly _aperçu_ when they find that they have succeeded in their desire, which is to experience a faint reflex glow from the feelings which they have kindled in man. Their looking-glass is their lover, their sole interest is centred in themselves, the aim and object of their lives is to be self-conscious, and life for them consists in circling round themselves. Men of this sort, men who are sterile egoists, have frequently been described; but until now no one has ever probed the depths of woman’s lack of feeling. Here, as in almost every subject that is new to literature, the French are the first to lead the way. But in real life these types meet us long before literature sees them and makes them her own, and women have long been familiar with this side of one another’s nature. The silent struggles which man does not perceive, and which both parties conceal from him, the coquette from vanity and her rival from pride, these silent struggles are legion as the sacrifices which they have cost. It is not moral prejudice that restrains the best types of the species from satisfying the more or less forbidden love which they awaken, for they pride themselves on their open minds; and it is not cowardice, for they are clever enough to escape any suspicion of scandal attaching to themselves; their inward coldness is the only cause. They are not willing to disturb themselves, lest in so doing the work of art, which is their own selves, should discover its defects. They lose nothing, or if they do, it is their imagination that is the loser. And if at the last they forget themselves it is not their blood or their heart, but it is the glow of reflex desire that forgets itself. III The coquette in _Flirt_ is a lady of the ordinary bourgeois type. She is determined to have admirers at any price, and despises no means whereby to capture the indifferent, fears no humiliation if only she can render submissive those who seek to resist her, nor does she hesitate to hold out hopes wherewith to attract the doubtful. She would have them all burn on the altar of her vanity like incense rising in her nostrils, but for the sake of convenience she remains an honourable woman. Her toilet is the sole occupation of her mind; to charm and afterwards reject is the daily excitement without which she cannot live.