"The thing is that I suppose you've been disappointing--" "Quite from the very first of my arrival?
I dare say.

I admit I was surprising even to myself." "And then of course," Maria went on, "I had much to do with it." "With my being surprising-- ?" "That will do," she laughed, "if you're too delicate to call it MY being! Naturally," she added, "you came over more or less for surprises." "Naturally!"-- he valued the reminder.
"But they were to have been all for you"-- she continued to piece it out--"and none of them for HER." Once more he stopped before her as if she had touched the point.
"That's just her difficulty--that she doesn't admit surprises.

It's a fact that, I think, describes and represents her; and it falls in with what I tell you--that she's all, as I've called it, fine cold thought.
She had, to her own mind, worked the whole thing out in advance, and worked it out for me as well as for herself.

Whenever she has done that, you see, there's no room left; no margin, as it were, for any alteration.

She's filled as full, packed as tight, as she'll hold and if you wish to get anything more or different either out or in--" "You've got to make over altogether the woman herself ?" "What it comes to," said Strether, "is that you've got morally and intellectually to get rid of her." "Which would appear," Maria returned, "to be practically what you've done." But her friend threw back his head.