The Sherlock Holmes Adventures Arthur Conan Doyle’s

She is always the woman to Sherlock Holmes. He hardly ever refers to her by any other name, in my experience. She completely overpowers and commands her sex in his sight. He didn’t really feel any sort of love for Irene Adler. That particular emotion in particular was odious to his cool, exact, and wonderfully regulated mind, which abhorred all emotions. He was, I assume, the most flawless observing and reasoning machine the world has ever known, but as a lover, he would have put himself in an awkward situation. He seldom discussed his more subdued emotions, unless it was in jest or with a sneer. For the onlooker, they were admirable objects that did a great job of lifting the curtain on men’s intentions and deeds. However, the trained reasoner would be introducing a distracting factor that might cast doubt on all of his mental output by admitting such intrusions into his own sensitive and delicately tuned temperament. A strong feeling in a nature like his would not be more unsettling than grit in a delicate instrument or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses. To him, though, there was only one woman, the late Irene Adler, whose memory was doubtful at best.