It has been shown that the afterglow following a discharge in xenon consists of two parts: (1) the resonance line, whose intensity initially decays exponentially in agreement with Holstein's theory; (2) an accompanying distributed radiation, experimentally a continuum, extending to about 1900 a.u. The intensity of this continuum decays exponentially at the same rate as the population of the lower metastable state at all wavelengths and each pressure studied. All departures from an exponential decay seem to be caused by repopulation of states by ionic recombination and are current dependent. Electron disappearance is due to ambipolar diffusion at low pressures and ion recombination at high pressures. The value of the ambipolar diffusion coefficient indicates that the afterglow positive ion is Xe2+ for pressures greater than 0.3 Torr. No phenomena which could be due to interchange of population between metastable states have been found in xenon.