As for Bulstrode, Conyers’s sad heart had glowed when he first heard of the advent of this great scholar in the county. Perhaps here was light at hand. But the very first sight of Bulstrode was enough for him. Bulstrode’s guzzling of liquor, his unbridled license of tongue, were repelling to a natural born ascetic and enthusiast. But Bulstrode was instantly attracted by the parson with the distressed eyes, which always seemed to be looking for something which they never could find. He pursued the acquaintance, and actually tracked Conyers to his lair in the tumble-down rectory. Here Bulstrode would sit for hours, clawing his unkempt hair, and drinking innumerable cups of tea out of a cracked teapot from sheer force of habit. He talked on every imaginable subject, and poured out the stores of his learning lavishly. But he never touched, in the remotest degree, upon religion. Conyers found out, though, that Bulstrode was deeply skilled in that science called theology, and at last the impulse came to unburden his mind and heart, which Bulstrode had long foreseen. They were sitting, one night soon after their acquaintance began, in the shabby rectory study, when Conyers made his confession--telling it all recklessly, his sallow face glowing, his deep eyes burning. Bulstrode heard patiently, even that greatest grievance of all to Conyers--the unwillingness of people to _think_ upon the great affair of religion, and their perfect willingness to accept anything rather than to bestow consideration or thought upon it. “And do you imagine,” asked Bulstrode gravely, stopping in the midst of his tea-drinking, “that religion is an intellectual exercise?” Poor Conyers admitted that he thought it had an intellectual side. “So it has, so it has; but it has a great emotional side too,” answered Bulstrode; “that’s where the women are nearer right than men think. The Christian religion undertakes to make a human being better, but it doesn’t pretend to make him wiser or happier--or only incidentally; so you see, it must work in the heart of man as in the brain. And I tell you, my clerical friend, that the great defect in all the other systems I’ve studied--and I know ’em all--is that they are meant for thinkers, and that leaves out nine tenths of the human race. The intellectual side of man’s relation to the Great First Cause was worked out long ago by those clever old Greeks. All these modern fellows have been threshing over old straw.” Conyers was surprised at this, and said so. It seemed to him that men who dared to meddle with so vast a subject must be of gigantic strength and heroic mould. Through the mists of his own ignorance and inexperience their figures loomed large, but when he expressed this in halting language, Bulstrode shouted with laughter.