Chapter 36 Summary

A hushed voice asks how much longer and a hushed reply answers a few minutes. Two boats float near the cliff and most of those who had gathered from the village earlier have left. Silent and remote, Mary is sitting in the stern of one of the boats with Willy and Theo. Her thoughts are strangely remote, perhaps protecting her from the agony of hope. She wonders what it is like to be dead.

"Death happens, love happens, and all human life is compact of accident and chance. If one loves what is so frail and mortal, if one loves and holds on, like a terrier holds on, must not one's love become changed? There is only one imperative to love: yet how can one endure to go on loving what must die, what indeed is death?" (pg. 331-2).

The police launch has...