當天他們送她出去，流蘇站在門檻上，柳原立在她身后，把手掌合在她的手掌上，笑道：“我說，我們几時結婚呢？”流蘇听了，一句話也沒有，只低 下了頭，落下淚來。柳原拉住她的手道：“來來，我們今天就到報館里去登啟事。不過你也許愿意候些時，等我們回到上海，大張旗鼓的排場一下，請請親戚們。” 流蘇道：“呸！他們也配！”說著，嗤的笑了出來，往后順勢一倒，靠在他身上。柳原伸手到前面去羞她的臉道：“又是哭，又是笑！”
兩人一同走進城去，走到一個峰回路轉的地方，馬路突然下瀉，眼見只是一片空靈-淡墨色的，潮濕的天。小鐵門口挑出一塊洋瓷招牌，寫的是：“趙祥慶牙醫。”風吹得招牌上的鐵鉤子吱吱響，招*票澈籩皇悄強樟櫚奶廉*
柳原歇下腳來望了半晌，感到那平淡中的恐怖，突然打起寒戰來，向流蘇道：“現在你可該相信了：‘死生契闊，’我們自己哪儿做得了主？轟炸的時 候，一個不巧-”流蘇嗔道：“到了這個時候，你還說做不了主的話！”柳原笑道：“我并不是打退堂鼓。我的意思是-”他看了看她的臉色，笑道：“不說 了。不說了。”他們繼續走路。柳原又道：“鬼使神差地，我們倒真的戀愛起來了！”流蘇道：“你早就說過你愛我。”柳原笑道：“那不算。我們那時候太忙著談 戀愛了，哪里還有工夫戀愛？”
結婚啟事在報上刊出了， 徐 先生 徐 太太赶了來道喜。流蘇因為他們在圍城中自顧自搬到安全地帶去，不管她的死活，心中有三分不快，然而也只得笑臉相迎。柳原辦了酒席，補請了一次客。不久，港滬之間恢复了交通，他們便回上海來了。
白公館里流蘇只回去過一次，只怕人多嘴多，惹出是非來。然而麻煩是免不了的。四奶奶決定和四爺進行离婚，眾人背后都派流蘇的不是。流蘇离了婚再嫁，竟有這樣惊人的成就，難怪旁人要學她的榜樣。流蘇蹲在燈影里點蚊煙香。想到四奶奶，她微笑了。
柳原現在從來不跟她鬧著玩了。他把他的俏皮話省下來說給旁的女人听。那是值得慶幸的好現象，表示他完全把她當自家人看待-名正言順的妻。然而流蘇還是有點悵惘。
香港的陷落成全了她。但是在這不可理喻的世界里，誰知道什么是因，什么是果？誰知道呢，也許就因為要成全她，一個大都市傾覆了。成千上万的人 死去，成千上万的人痛苦著，跟著是惊天動地的大改革…流蘇并不覺得她在歷史上的地位有什么微妙之點。她只是笑盈盈地站起身來，將蚊煙香盤踢到桌子底下 去。
傳奇里的傾城傾國的人大抵如此。處都是傳奇，可不見得有這么圓滿的收場。胡琴咿咿呀呀拉著，在万盞燈火的夜晚，拉過來又拉過去，說不盡的蒼涼的故事-不問也罷！──完──
Eileen Chang
Eileen Chang (1920-1995) was born into an aristocratic family in Shanghai. Her father, deeply traditional in his ways, was an opium addict; her mother, partly educated in England, was a sophisticated woman of cosmopolitan tastes. Their unhappy marriage ended in divorce, and Chang eventually ran away from her father-who had beaten her for defying her stepmother, then locked her in her room for nearly half a year. Chang studied literature at the University of Hong Kong, but the Japanese attack on the city in 1941 forced her to return to occupied Shanghia; where she was able to publish the stories and essays (collected in two volumes, Romances, 1944, and Written on Water, 1945) that soon made her a literary star. In 1944 Chang married Hu Lancheng, a Japanese sympathizer whose sexual infidelities led to their divorce three years later. The rise of Communist influence made it increasingly difficult for Chang to continue living in Shanghai; she moved to Hong Kong in 1952, then immigrated to the United States three years later. She remarried (an American, Ferdinand Reyher, who died in 1967) and held various posts as writer-in-residence; in 1969 she obtained a more permanent position as a researcher at Berkeley. Two novels, both commissioned in the 1950s by the United States Information Service as anti-Communist propaganda, The Rice Sprout Song and Naked Earth, were followed by a third, The Rouge of the North (1967), which expanded on her celebrated early novella, "The Golden Cangue." Chang continued writing essays and stories in Chinese, scripts for Hong Kong films, and began work on an English translation of the famous Qing novel The Sing-Song Girls of Shanghai. In spite of the tremendous revival of interest in her work that began in Taiwan and Hong Kong in the 1970s, and that later spread to mainland China, Chang became ever more reclusive as she grew older. Eileen Chang was found dead in her Los Angeles apartment in September 1995.
