Teresa is the daughter of a brilliant bohemian composer, Albert Sanger, who with his 'circus' of precocious children, slovenly mistress and assorted hangers-on, lives in a rambling chalet high in the Austrian Alps. 'Unbalanced, untaught and fatally warm-hearted', at fourteen Tessa has already fallen in love with Lewis Dodd, a gifted composer like her father. Confidently she awaits maturity (and Lewis). Even Lewis' marriage to Tessa's beautiful cousin Florence cannot shatter the bond between Lewis and his constant nymph...