She saw herself as the victim of much, and as guilty of much.

And then inspiration came upon her, or perhaps it was merely a high frenzy of desperation, and she saw that the responsibility for the whole situation was upon her alone; she saw it as her duty, the role assigned her, to try to untangle alone this tangled situation, to try to measure out justice to every one.
First of all, as she had told Larry, her father's dream of her must remain unbroken.

Whatever she did, she must do nothing that might possibly be a sharp blow to the conception of his daughter which were the roots and trunk and flowering branches of his present happiness..

..
And then came a real inspiration! She would, in time, make herself into the girl he believed her--make his dream the truth! She would get rid of Old Jimmie and Barney--would cut loose from everything pertaining to her former life--would disappear and live for a year or two in the kind of environment in which he believed he had placed her--and would reappear and claim him for her father! And for his own sake, he should never know the truth.

Two years more and he should have the actuality, where he now had only the dream! But before she was free to enter upon this plan, before she could vanish out of the knowledge of all who had known her, there was a great duty to Larry Brainard which she must discharge.