An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser — Read

But the resources of Clyde, in such a situation as this, were slim. For, apart from Liggett, Whiggam, and a few minor though decidedly pleasant and yet rather remote department heads, all of whom were now looking on him as a distinctly superior person who could scarcely be approached too familiarly in connection with anything, there was no one to whom he could appeal. In so far as the social group to which he was now so eagerly attaching himself was concerned, it would have been absurd for him to attempt, however slyly, to extract any information there. For while the youths of this world at least were dashing here and there, and because of their looks, taste and means indulging themselves in phases of libertinism--the proper wild oats of youth--such as he and others like himself could not have dreamed of affording, still so far was he from any real intimacy with any of these that he would not have dreamed of approaching them for helpful information.

His sanest thought, which occurred to him almost immediately after leaving Roberta, was that instead of inquiring of any druggist or doctor or person in Lycurgus--more particularly any doctor, since the entire medical profession here, as elsewhere, appeared to him as remote, cold, unsympathetic and likely very expensive and unfriendly to such an immoral adventure as this--was to go to some near-by city, preferably Schenectady, since it was larger and as near as any, and there inquire what, if anything, could be obtained to help in such a situation as this. For he must find something.