WRECKAGE

Smooth and smiling faces, but ruin in their eyes. Mathieu suddenly felt a kinship with all those creatures who would have done so much better to go home but no longer had the power and sat there smoking slender cigarettes, drinking steely-tasting compounds, smiling as their ears oozed music, and dismally contemplating the wreckage of their destiny; he felt the discreet apppeal of a humble and timorous happiness: "Fancy being one of that lot...."