Strangers were stared out of countenance by staring white houses, staring white streets, staring tracts of arid road, staring hills from which verdure was burnt away.
Fires of the last-mentioned materials were rare, and though comparatively small in magnitude beside the transient blazes, now began to get the best of them by mere long continuance.
Before them fire devours, behind them a flame blazes. Before them the land is like the garden of Eden, behind them, a desert waste— nothing escapes them.
New York's dumping ground halfway between West Egg and the city where the burnt-out coal that powered the booming golden city was discarded by men who moved dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.