He could give her neither, because he believed that she cared for neither caress nor joy from his hand.

There was something he could offer--all that he had to give that she could take, but the offer was so hard to make that he prefaced it.
"A way might be found by which you could return to our house, Susannah, and be troubled by no spoken reproach, and you could live down that which was unspoken." He paused a minute, and then said, "But I would know first that you leave all that pertains to your life here freely.
You have found it true, what is so much reported, that the Mormons follow wicked practices ?" "No, oh no, Ephraim; that is not true--mad, deluded perhaps, but not wicked.

The stories of wickedness told are malicious even where there is a colour of truth, and for the most part there is none.

In the matter of daily life they abide by the laws of God and man, and nothing else is taught." It was the thought of the sacerdotal deception that she felt had been so lately practised upon herself that caused her to put in the reserving words "in the matter of daily life"; but when she remembered the malice that had instigated report, the unlovely lives of the malicious fault-finders, the evil stains that lie even upon the best lives, she burst out, "There is not one in our community, Ephraim, who would stoop to a cruel act either in word or deed.

There is not one of us, even among those who have recently repented from very wicked lives, who would try to take the life of a defenceless man when he was, at a great cost to himself, pursuing what he thought to be the path of duty--as you did, Ephraim." Before this he had kept his eyes upon the ground; standing still now, he looked straight into hers.