te 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 20th 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 lighted, 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 told