The End of the Affair

Maurice Bendrix tells the story after Sarah's death, so readers know from the beginning that grief and anger shape his account. He first met Sarah while researching her civil-servant husband Henry for a novel. Their affair was intense, but Bendrix repeatedly demanded reassurance and treated Sarah's continuing marriage as evidence that she might leave him.[1]

Sarah abruptly ended the affair after a wartime explosion and refused to explain why. Two years later, Bendrix meets Henry on Clapham Common and learns that Henry has considered hiring a detective. Bendrix quietly takes over the investigation. Albert Parkis follows Sarah to the home of Richard Smythe, a public atheist, while Bendrix turns times, addresses, and scraps of writing into a case against her.[1]

The detective plot changes when Parkis obtains Sarah's diary. Her own words retell the explosion and separation from inside a conflict Bendrix had mistaken for infidelity. The second half moves from discovering what happened to arguing about what it means: promise or compulsion, coincidence or miracle, faith or a new form of hatred.[1]

In 1946, Bendrix meets Henry on a wet Clapham Common. Henry says he is worried about Sarah and has considered hiring a detective. Bendrix recommends an agency, then employs Albert Parkis himself because he wants control of the investigation.[1]

Bendrix remembers meeting Sarah during the war while researching Henry for a novel. Sarah and Bendrix begin an affair. Their happiness is repeatedly damaged by Bendrix's jealousy: he wants Sarah to prove that he matters more than Henry and interprets uncertainty as betrayal.[1]

During a V-1 attack in 1944, an explosion throws Bendrix down a stairway and leaves him motionless. Sarah believes he is dead. She prays to a God she is not sure exists and promises to give Bendrix up if his life is restored. Bendrix walks back into the room with limited injury. Sarah treats his survival as the answer that binds her to the vow, and she ends the affair without explaining it.[1]

Parkis follows Sarah to Richard Smythe, a lecturer who argues publicly against religion. Bendrix assumes Smythe is her new lover. A fragment of Sarah's writing seems to show that she wants to abandon everyone for an unnamed 'you.'[1]

Parkis obtains Sarah's diary. It reveals the vow and shows that Smythe is not a lover: Sarah hopes he can convince her that God does not exist, which would release her from the promise. Instead, her attempts at disbelief deepen her sense that she is being drawn toward faith.[1]

After reading the diary, Bendrix contacts Sarah. She is ill and runs into cold rain rather than face him. He follows her to a church. They plan to leave together once she recovers, but the pneumonia worsens before that future can begin.[1]

Sarah dies. Henry asks Bendrix to stay with him, and the former rivals share a house made empty by the same loss. Father Crompton argues that Sarah's movement toward Catholicism should shape the funeral, but Henry and Bendrix arrange cremation.[1]

Sarah's mother then reveals that Sarah was secretly baptized as a child. Parkis's son Lance survives an acute abdominal illness after believing Sarah came to comfort him, and Smythe's facial condition disappears. Bendrix resists calling these events miracles, but he can no longer treat the religious question as irrelevant.[1]