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 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 clues, 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 twentieth 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 lit, 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 their own story. He was at work again. He had risen out of his drug-created dreams and was hot upon the scent of some new problem. I rang the bell and was shown up to the chamber which had formerly been in part my own.

“But—but—pardon me—is it because you don’t intend there should be any more song? Is that your intention?”

“That I couldn’t say,” said the Marchesa, smoking, smoking.

“Yes,” said Manfredi. “At the present time it is because she WILL not—not because she cannot. It is her will, as you say.”

“Dear me! Dear me!” said Algy. “But this is really another disaster added to the war list.—But—but—will none of us ever be able to persuade you?” He smiled half cajoling, half pathetic, with a prodigious flapping of his eyes.

“I don’t know,” said she. “That will be as it must be.”

“Then can’t we say it must be SONG once more?”

To this sally she merely laughed, and pressed out her half–smoked cigarette.

“How very disappointing! How very cruel of—of fate—and the war— and—and all the sum total of evils,” said Algy.

“Perhaps—” here the little and piquant host turned to Aaron.

“Perhaps Mr. Sisson, your flute might call out the bird of song. As thrushes call each other into challenge, you know. Don’t you think that is very probable?”

“I have no idea,” said Aaron.

“But you, Marchesa. Won’t you give us hope that it might be so?”

“I’ve no idea, either,” said she. “But I should very much like to hear Mr. Sisson’s flute. It’s an instrument I like extremely.”

“There now. You see you may work the miracle, Mr. Sisson. Won’t you play to us?”

“I’m afraid I didn’t bring my flute along,” said Aaron “I didn’t want to arrive with a little bag.”

“Quite!” said Algy. “What a pity it wouldn’t go in your pocket.”

“Not music and all,” said Aaron.

“Dear me! What a comble of disappointment. I never felt so strongly, Marchesa, that the old life and the old world had collapsed. —Really—I shall soon have to try to give up being cheerful at all.”

“Don’t do that,” said the Marchesa. “It isn’t worth the effort.”

“Ah! I’m glad you find it so. Then I have hope.”

She merely smiled, indifferent.

The teaparty began to break up—Aaron found himself going down the stairs with the Marchesa and her husband. They descended all three in silence, husband and wife in front. Once outside the door, the husband asked:

“How shall we go home, dear? Tram or carriage—?” It was evident he was economical.

“Walk,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at Aaron. “We are all going the same way, I believe.”

Aaron said where he lived. They were just across the river. And so all three proceeded to walk through the town.

“You are sure it won’t be too much for you—too far?” said the little officer, taking his wife’s arm solicitously. She was taller than he. But he was a spirited fellow.