Eckart, an idealistic nineteen-year-old conscientious objector performing his alternative service at a workshop for the mentally impaired, accepts the challenge to socialize Ulrike, a girl his own age who is, emotionally, a three-year-old and whose violent tantrums terrorize the workshop staff and workers. Her behavior improves as she learns to trust Eckart, much to the relief of the girl's mother, who has fought to keep her child from being institutionalized. Once all her affection is focused on Eckart, Ulrike announces that she wants to sleep with him. As Eckart discovers when he takes her on a visit to his parents' home for a weekend, what she wants is to lie passively next to him, at least she can articulate that much. His desire is so intense that he nearly succumbs more than once to her urging that he lie down with her during her daily rest period. An erotically charged dream sequence leaves it to the reader to decide if these unlikely lovers satisfy their physical desire. Ulrike reacts with such venom, however, toward Eckart's camaraderie with a new female social worker that her social skills erode; she becomes morose and demanding, and Eckart realizes the futility of a future for them.