“It’s a monstrous sight deeper and bigger and greater than the intellectual side,” answered Bulstrode. “That’s what I keep telling that poor devil, Conyers. I ain’t got any emotional nature myself, to speak of; you have, though. But you’ve been an intellectual toper for so long, that I daresay you’d forgotten all about your emotions yourself. Some men like horse racing, and some like to accumulate money, and some like to squander it; but your dissipation is in mental processes of all sorts. You like to read for reading’s sake, and write for writing’s sake, and your mind has got to that stage, like Michael Scott’s devil, it has got to be employed or it will rend you. I never saw such an inveterate appetite for ideas as you have. But will it ever come to anything? Will you ever write that book?” Skelton turned a little pale. The fierce ambition within him, the pride, the licensed egotism, all made him fear defeat; and suppose this work--But why call it a work? it was as yet inchoate. However, it pleased some subtile self-love of Skelton’s to have Bulstrode discuss him. Bulstrode was no respecter of persons; and Skelton appreciated so much the man’s intellectual makeup, that it pleased him to think that Bulstrode, after living with him all these years, still found him an object of deep and abiding interest. So he did not check him. Few men object to having others talk about themselves. “Whether I shall ever live to finish it--or to begin it--is a question I sometimes ask myself,” said Skelton. “When I look around at these,” pointing with his cigar to the portraits hanging on the wall, “I feel the futility of it. Forty-six is the oldest of them; most of them went off before thirty-five. Strange, for we are not physically bad specimens.” They were not. Skelton himself looked like a man destined for long life. He was abstemious in every way, and singularly correct in his habits. Bulstrode remained huddled in his chair, and, as usual, when encouraged, went on talking without the slightest reticence. “Sometimes, when I sit and look at you, I ask myself, ‘Is he a genius after all?’ and then I go and read that essay of yours, Voices of the People, and shoot me if I believe any young fellow of twenty that ever lived could do any better! But that very finish and completeness--it would have been better if it had been crude.” “It is crude, very crude,” answered Skelton with fierce energy, dashing his cigar stump into the fire. “I have things on my library table that would make that appear ridiculous.” “O Lord, no!” replied Bulstrode calmly. Skelton felt like throwing him out of the window at that, but Bulstrode was quite unconscious of giving offense. His next words, though, partly soothed Skelton’s self-love: