Bok had no sister, no women confidantes: he had lived with and for his mother.

She was the only woman he really knew or who really knew him.

His boyhood days had been too full of poverty and struggle to permit him to mingle with the opposite sex.
And it is a curious fact that Edward Bok's instinctive attitude toward women was that of avoidance.

He did not dislike women, but it could not be said that he liked them.

They had never interested him.