Here was a combination of intellect, refinement, and savagery.

The red, sullen lips stamped the delicate, fanatical face with cruelty and barbaric indulgence, while yet there was an intensity in the eyes that showed the man was possessed of an idea which mastered him--a root-thought.

David was at once conscious of a complex personality, of a man in whom two natures fought.

He understood it.
By instinct the man was a Mahdi, by heredity he was a voluptuary, that strange commingling of the religious and the evil found in so many criminals.

In some far corner of his nature David felt something akin.
The rebellion in his own blood against the fine instinct of his Quaker faith and upbringing made him grasp the personality before him.