近期热门的优选书刊《飘》，轻松有趣温柔的治愈你(71)

They looked the same but they were different. What was it？Was it only that they were five years older？No, it was something more than the passing of time.Something had gone out of them, out of their world.Five years ago, a feeling of security had wrapped them all around so gently they were not even aware of it.In its shelter they had flowered.Now it was gone and with it had gone the old thrill, the old sense of something delightful and exciting just around the corner, the old glamor of their way of living.
She knew she had changed too, but not as they had changed, and it puzzled her. She sat and watched them and she felt herself an alien among them, as alien and lonely as if she had come from another world, speaking a language they did not understand and she not understanding theirs.Then she knew that this feeling was the same one she felt with Ashley.With him and with people of his kind—and they made up most of her world—she felt outside of something she could not understand.
Their faces were little changed and their manners not at all but it seemed to her that these two things were all that remained of her old friends. An ageless dignity, a timeless gallantry still clung about them and would cling until they died but they would carry undying bitterness to their graves, a bitterness too deep for words.They were a soft-spoken, fierce, tired people who were defeated and would not know defeat, broken yet standing determinedly erect.They were crushed and helpless, citizens of conquered provinces.They werelooking on the state they loved, seeing it trampled by the enemy, rascals making a mock of the law, their former slaves a menace, their men disfranchised, their women insulted.And they were remembering graves.