The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Original Text

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To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention herunder any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. Itwas not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that oneparticularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, Itake it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as alover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softerpassions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer-excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasonerto admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was tointroduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit ina sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be moredisturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one womanto him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.I had seen little of Holmes lately. My marriage had drifted us away from each other. Myown complete happiness, and the home-centred interests which rise up around the manwho first finds himself master of his own establishment, were sufficient to absorb all myattention, while Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating fromweek to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierceenergy of his own keen nature. He was still, as ever, deeply attracted by the study of crime, and occupied his immense faculties and extraordinary powers of observation in followingout those clues, and clearing up those mysteries which had been abandoned as hopeless bythe official police. From time to time I heard some vague account of his doings: of hissummons to Odessa in the case of the Trepoff murder, of his clearing up of the singulartragedy of the Atkinson brothers at Trincomalee, and finally of the mission which he hadaccomplished so delicately and successfully for the reigning family of Holland. Beyondthese signs of his activity, however, which I merely shared with all the readers of the dailypress, I knew little of my former friend and companio.