Conradin was ten years old, and the doctor had pronounced his
professional opinion that the boy would not live another five
years. The doctor was silky and effete, and counted for little,
but his opinion was endorsed by Mrs. de Ropp, who counted for
nearly everything. Mrs. De Ropp was Conradin's cousin and
guardian, and in his eyes she represented those three-fifths of
the world that are necessary and disagreeable and real; the other
two-fifths, in perpetual antagonism to the foregoing, were summed
up in himself and his imagination. One of these days Conradin
supposed he would succumb to the mastering pressure of wearisome
necessary things---such as illnesses and coddling restrictions and
drawn-out dullness. Without his imagination, which was rampant
under the spur of loneliness, he would have succumbed long ago.

Mrs. de Ropp would never, in her honestest moments, have confessed
to herself that she disliked Conradin, though she might have been
dimly aware that thwarting him "for his good" was a duty which she
did not find particularly irksome. Conradin hated her with a
desperate sincerity which he was perfectly able to mask. Such few
pleasures as he could contrive for himself gained an added relish
from the likelihood that they would be displeasing to his
guardian, and from the realm of his imagination she was locked
out--an unclean thing, which should find no entrance.

In the dull, cheerless garden, overlooked by so many windows that
were ready to open with a message not to do this or that, or a
reminder that medicines were due, he found little attraction. The
few fruit-trees that it contained were set jealously apart from
his plucking, as though they were rare specimens of their kind