"I don't. What harm can it do you?"
"If you don't see, I'm afraid I can't explain. To be nameless is—- how shall I say it?—a sort of protection to me. In helping you, and taking care of you, I've done what almost any really nice girl would have shrunk from. There are plenty of people who would say is was wrong. And in a way—a way I could never make you understand, unless you understand already—it's a relief to me that you don't know who I am. And even that isn't everything."
"Well—what else?"
"When this little episode is over"—her voice trembled, and it was not without some blinking of the eyes that she was able to begin again—"when this little episode is over, it will be better for us both—for you as well as for me—to know as little about it as possible. The danger isn't past by any means; but it's a kind of danger in which ignorance can be made to look a good deal like innocence. I shan't know anything about you after you've gone, and you know nothing whatever about me."
"That's what I complain of. Suppose I pull the thing off, and make a success of myself somewhere else, how should I communicate with you again?"
"Why should you communicate with me at all?"
"To pay you back your money, for one thing—"
"Oh, that doesn't matter."
"Perhaps it doesn't from your point of view; but it does from mine. But it wouldn't be my only reason in any case."
Something in his voice and in his eyes warned her to rise and interrupt him.