I must take a trip in that direction tomorrow." When they separated for the night, Gerfaut, bored by his evening and wounded by his reception from Clemence, which, he thought, surpassed anything he could have expected of her capricious disposition, addressed to the young woman a profound bow and a look which said: "I am here in spite of you; I shall stay here in spite of you; you shall love me in spite of yourself." Madame de Bergenheim replied by a glance none the less expressive, in which a lover the most prone to conceit could read: "Do as you like; I have as much indifference for your love as disdain for your presumption." This was the last shot in this preliminary skirmish..