If the girl really love you, she will either be together with you or totally don't contact you... Don't contact you is because that she don't want to mess up your life but she know you both won't have a good ending...
If she don't want to be together with you but still want to stay close with you (if normal close is OK, but based on what you said I think is a little bit over), I think she is just wanting someone to care for her, and this is actually quite selfish.. If someone better is shown up then there's high probability that she will go to that person...
Well, it's just my advice.. Because I face this problem before, a guy treats me very good and I know I have feeling on him too, but I know we won't have good ending, so that I would rather not to contact him because I don't want to make him sad again (although it's very painful for me)