The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Complete

To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under anyother name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he feltany emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent tohis cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning andobserving machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a falseposition. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirablethings for the observer-excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for thetrained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament wasto introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in asensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbingthan a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and thatwoman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.