Definition of "dalliance"

As in the season of rutting (an uncouth phrase, by which the vulgar denote that gentle dalliance, which in the well-wooded forest of Hampshire, passes between lovers of the ferine kind),

1749, Henry Fielding, chapter XI, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volumes (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], book V

But, with a gesture, she put a period to this dalliance—one shouldn't palter so on an empty stomach, she might almost have said.

1922, Michael Arlen, “2/4/1”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days‎