The End Of The Affair

Bendrix reads Sarah’s diary. She talks about her love for “You” (48), a broken narrative spread across a number of days in February 1946. In an entry marked 12 February, she describes a dream in which she ascends a long flight of stairs and sees Bendrix at the top. She is happy, but when she calls out that she is coming, “it wasn’t Maurice’s voice that answered” (48), but a stranger’s voice. Sarah laments that she is no longer with Bendrix, blaming God. Bendrix flicks through the diary, noting Sarah’s life with Henry which, while mundane, is still able to hurt him.

In an entry marked 12 June 1944, Sarah describes a conversation about love that she had with Bendrix. Bendrix is “jealous of the past and the present and the future” (49) and she muses on her love for both Bendrix and her potential love for God, though she seems to be an atheist. Although both she and Bendrix seem happy, “never in our lives have we known more unhappiness” (50).

Five days later, the next diary entry describes a day when, as she waited for Bendrix on the Common, she heard several speakers.