On the third night, with the time growing late, the mood came upon him, and he struck the idle chords of the druithine commencing a reverie. He played a reflective melody and a minor retrospect...Music is the result of experience, he thought; he had had sufficient experience to be a musician. Admittedly some of his emotions were raw, and some of his chords were played with his knee too hard against the brilliancy lever. The awareness of this came to Etzwane; he changed, almost in mid-phrase, to soft, quiet passages...He noticed that the company had become attentive; before he had been playing in an abstraction; now he felt self-conscious. Modulating into a set of conventional chords, he finished...He was afraid to raise his eyes and look out over the company. Might they have felt what he felt? Or were they smiling at his excesses? He put down the instrument and stepped from the chair.