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Lucio is a young Italian hanging about Capri, peering into the melancholy eyes of Beate, a German woman he has met there. He is a student of literature, a translator of Heinrich von Kleist, the German dramatic poet whose short life ended in a double suicide, and he sees in the girl's ''unhappy and stubborn look'' not only a trace of moody German Romanticism but also ''the sorrow of the world.'' Sure enough, Beate is contemplating suicide and would like to make Lucio a partner in a pact. High tragedy and silliness mix here - ''It's all bad literature,'' Lucio thinks - and there are wry, awkward jokes. ''While two people can declare their love with their eyes, it is much more difficult ... for them to agree, through glances, to kill themselves together.'' ''Beyond any doubt,'' Lucio later remarks, ''it requires a great deal of vitality to take your life.'' Then Beate leaves Capri with her husband and is replaced in Lucio's pensione by her twin sister, who is also her moral opposite, full of sauciness and life. After that the plot takes a couple of fancy twists it would be unkind to reveal.