A member of one sex yields to the advances of the other without regard for the nice sentiments and civil courtesies which a more equitably formed society, in ages to follow, might want to help cultivate in his or her heirs, but according to a complex of half-felt impulses, aboriginal at its core, though perhaps more lately annotated with a personal scribbling of those subtler feelings about which, when we require a more complete description, we like to turn to poets and lyricists. It is a desperate situation made bearable by little more than a winking signal that the obscure and intricate genealogical run-up will have not been squandered.