I.

    To Sherlock Holmes
         she is always THE woman.

    I have seldom
          heard him
              mention her
                   under any other name.

    In his eyes
         she eclipses
            and predominates the whole
                   of her sex.

    It was not
         that he felt
               any emotion akin
                  to love for Irene Adler.

    All emotions,
           and that one particularly,
         were abhorrent to his cold,
           precise but admirably balanced mind.

    He was,
           I take it,
         the most perfect
               reasoning and observing machine
             that the world has seen,
           but as a lover
             he would have placed himself
                   in a false position.

    He never spoke
           of the softer passions,
         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 teasoner
          to admit such intrusions
               into his own delicate
                   and finely
              adjusted temperament
        was to introduce
               a distracting factor
          which might
              throw a doubt
                   upon all his mental results.

    Grit in a sensitive instrument,
           or a crack
               in one
                   of his own high-power lenses,
         would not
              be more
                  disturbing than a strong emotion
                       in a nature
             such as his.

    And yet there was
         but one woman to 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.

    My own complete happiness,
           and the home-centred interests
              which rise
                   up around the man
             who first
                  finds himself master
                       of his own establishment,
         were sufficient
              to absorb all my attention,
           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
               from week to week
             between cocaine and ambition,
         the drowsiness of the drug,
           and the fierce energy
               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 following
               out those clews,
         and clearing up those mysteries
              which had been abandoned
                   as hopeless
                 by the official police.

    From time to time
         I heard
               some vague account
                   of his doings:
        of his summons to Odessa
               in the case
                   of the Trepoff murder,
           of his clearing
               up of the singular tragedy
                   of the Atkinson brothers
                 at Trincomalee,
         and finally
               of the mission which
             he had
                  accomplished so delicately
                       and successfully
                  for the reigning
                     family of Holland.

    Beyond these signs
           of his activity,
         however,
         which I merely
              shared with
                   all the readers
                       of the daily press,
           I knew little
            of my former friend
                  and companion.

    One night
          --it was
               on the twentieth of March,
           1888--I was
              returning from a journey
                   to a patient
         (for I
            had now
                  returned to civil practice),
          when my way
              led me through Baker Street.

    As I passed
           the well-remembered door,
         which must always
              be associated
                   in my mind
                 with my wooing,
         and with the dark incidents
               of the Study
             in Scarlet,
           I was
             seized with a keen desire
              to see Holmes again,
         and to know
             how he
                was employing his extraordinary powers.

    His rooms were brilliantly lit,
           and,
         even as I looked up,
           I saw his tall,
         spare figure pass twice
               in a dark silhouette
             against the blind.

    He was
          pacing the room swiftly,
           eagerly,
         with his head
               sunk upon his chest
                and his hands clasped
                        behind him.

    To me,
           who knew his every mood
               and habit,
         his attitude and manner