Adventure 1
A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA
1
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. A1l 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 other.
