What should he do?
Did not simple rectitude require that he should throw off the cassock and return to the world?
But he had seen some renegade priests and had despised them.

A married priest with whom he was acquainted filled him with disgust.

All this, no doubt, was but a survival of his long religious training.

He retained the notion that a priest cannot, must not, weaken; the idea that when one has dedicated oneself to God one cannot take possession of oneself again.

Possibly, also, he felt that he was too plainly branded, too different from other men already, to prove otherwise than awkward and unwelcome among them.