The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

 

by Arthur Conan Doyle

 

I. A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA

 

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 reasoner 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