But I perceive that some further explanation will be necessary. Although, then, as has been intimated, I had existed in this great, beautiful, and seductive world during more than a quarter of a century, I had remained all that time heart-whole; and though my immunity had never happened to cost me an effort, it was none the less in accordance with a certain hard-and-fast rule which I had long ago laid down for my guidance throughout life. This rule was, to uphold, at all times and against all comers, the dogma that a bachelor life was, for Tom Wyndham, the only proper, expedient, and dignified one. Marriage, so far as I was concerned, was against both my principles and my interest. I was an artist, to begin with, and in my opinion it was the duty of every true artist to live for his art alone, jealously eschewing whatever might tend to divide or alienate his devotion. His transactions with the sex, if any transactions there must be, should be strictly in the way of business; he might paint them, but never woo them. But beyond this, I was (or so I had fondly imagined) constitutionally and impenetrably proof against female fascinations. Like the famous Duke of Gloster, I was not formed for sportive tricks, nor made to court an amorous looking-glass. In other words, I had always been noted for my awkwardness and infelicity in women's society; and I could not doubt that I was as tiresome and oppressive to them as they were always terrible and often hateful to me. Here, then, were good and sufficient obstacles enough against matrimonial entanglements; and there were others behind. I was as poor as I was unattractive; I was destitute of the faculty of money-making, and I was as incapable of winning a rich wife by my personal merits as I should have been of living upon her bounty afterwards. In short, and not to multiply objections, confirmed bachelorhood was my category by every law, moral, mental, and material; notwithstanding which, I had committed the inconceivable imbecility of losing my heart and head at the same moment, and ... but it is enough that I lost my temper at the time; to lose it over again now would be undignified.