The last thought made him think better of himself, for it had a certain poetic ring to it, and so he favored the girls with a loud and slightly off-key rendition of " The Wearin' o' the Green" .
And we realized at the time, the reason why we were losing the energy of it was that we were trying to fix all the mistakes, like the out-of-tune bass, and the tempo just goes up and down.
The countess, even when she spoke indifferently of other things, seemed to have a new voice, as if the instrument had lost some chords and others were out of tune.
It's like the moment when you are playing music and you feel the sour note come, that feeling that you have of a direction towards wrongness is conscience.