Page 533 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

to dislike everything conventional—I know all about that;
but really, what you’re saying either has no meaning, or it
has a very wrong meaning. How can you think it a matter
of no importance whether the peasant, whom you love as

you assert..’
‘I never did assert it,’ thought Konstantin Levin.
‘...dies without help? The ignorant peasant-women
starve the children, and the people stagnate in darkness,
and are helpless in the hands of every village clerk, while
you have at your disposal a means of helping them, and
don’t help them because to your mind it’s of no
importance.’
And Sergey Ivanovitch put before him the alternative:
either you are so undeveloped that you can’t see all that
you can do, or you won’t sacrifice your ease, your vanity,
or whatever it is, to do it.
Konstantin Levin felt that there was no course open to
him but to submit, or to confess to a lack of zeal for the
public good. And this mortified him and hurt his feelings.
‘It’s both,’ he said resolutely: ‘I don’t see that it was
possible..’
‘What! was it impossible, if the money were properly
laid out, to provide medical aid?’

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