The residents of Villa Rubein lead a quiet and generally conventional existence until one spring day when Greta, twelve years old, outspoken, and inquisitive, follows her mischievous dog Scruff into a previously abandoned house and meets the painter Alois Harz. Harz is drawn into a friendship with the entire family, growing closer to all of them but especially nineteen-year-old Christian, who soon finds herself torn between her intense love for the painter and her love for her family.