The important point was to prevent the possibility of Unorna's name being connected with an open scandal.

Every present circumstance in the case was directly or indirectly the result of Unorna's unreasoning passion for himself, and it was clearly his duty, as a man of honour, to shield her from the consequences of her own acts, as far as lay in his power.
He did not indeed believe literally all that she had told him in her mad confession.

Much of that, he was convinced, was but a delusion.

It might be possible, indeed, for Unorna to produce forgetfulness of such a dream as she impressed upon Kafka's mind in the cemetery that same afternoon, or even, perhaps, of some real circumstance of merely relative importance in a man's life; but the Wanderer could not believe that it was in her power to destroy the memory of the great passion through which she pretended that he himself had passed.

He smiled at the idea, for he had always trusted his own senses and his own memory.