Many chance comments which she made were straws which might have shown him the way the current of her thought tended underneath her habitual silence, but they showed him nothing.

It was mortifying to her to observe that Smith, rarely as he saw her, was always cognisant of her mental attitude, while her husband remained ignorant.
Susannah gave up the girlish habit of fencing with facts that it appeared modest to ignore.

She was perfectly aware that she exercised a distinct influence over the prophet, of what sort or degree she could not determine.

Little as she desired this influence, she could not withhold a puzzled admiration for Smith's conduct.

He rarely spoke to her except in the most meagre and formal way, and all his decrees which tended for her elevation in the eyes of the community or for her personal comfort were so expressed that no personal bias could be detected.
She asked herself if Smith practised this self-restraint for conscience' sake, or from motives of policy, or whether it was that several distinct selves were living together within him, and that what appeared restraint was in reality the usual predominance of a part of him to which she bore little or no relation.