Now, as he revolved the meeting in his mind, he found that it was not in the least degree a surprise. Somehow, he had always expected that this girl would step suddenly into his life, with her ruddy hair and her gray eyes. It seemed to him to be something which the natural evolution of that life demanded. He had sounded every note in the gamut of emotions appropriate to a man in his position. He had had his serious, almost ascetic moods, his despondencies, his flights of folly, his impulses of stern ambition, his hours of morbid brooding and of reckless gayety. He could no longer number his love-affairs with any approach to accuracy. They were hopelessly jumbled in his memory, by very reason of their number and their triviality. Here and there, a face stood out from its fellows--the Baronne de Banis, Lady Mary Kaswellyn, Rosa de Mirecourt, or the Marquise de Baucheron--but none of these impelled him to regret. There were no entanglements, no uncomfortable circumstances to recall. Not a stone lay in the way of the gate of the future, as, in his imagination, it swung open before him. As we have said, the fates were kind to Lieutenant Eugène Drouin. The current of experience had borne his individual shallop over deeps and shallows safely and with a song, and, now that a sudden turn of the stream had shown him Natalie Tournadour waiting on the bank, it seemed to him to be the most natural thing imaginable,--something which intuition had taught him was inevitable, and, what was better, which experience told him was desirable. The event had found him ready and willing to make room for her beside him in the boat, and, so, continue the journey in her company, well content. He bowed to fate politely, with a graceful merci! For forty-eight hours he watched, almost as if he had been a disinterested outsider, this pleasant fancy moulding the details of his future life. He reckoned his rentes anew, assigning a due proportion to a little hôtel in the Monceau quarter, to a villa at Houlgate, to horses, household expenses, his wife's allowance, servants, entertainment, a month at Aix, another at Nice, a third at Hombourg. He saw himself retired, and in the Chambre. And over all hovered, like a luminous presiding angel, the presence of Mademoiselle Tournadour--Madame Drouin!