Read it through once

This place was finished in a manner which combined elegance with extreme simplicity. The rooms were indeed almost bare, and as now the rival parties pressed into them, spreading along the empty galleries and across the wide, deserted floors, there was such an interweaving of gay colours as would have been hard to out-do. The musicians were again called upon, and this time played a sequence of little-known airs which won universal applause. Soon they were joined by a troupe of dancers whom Genji had himself selected, drawing up at the same time a list of pieces which he thought would interest such an audience.