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
that 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-centered 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