"Wait a minute. So your name begins with S!"

"Like a good many others," she smiled.

"Then tell me what it is. Don't let me go away without knowing it. You
can't think what it means to me."

"I should think you'd see what it means to me."

"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."