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"Do you know, I've been thinking about you," said Sergey

Ivanovitch. "It's beyond everything what's being done in the

district, according to what this doctor tells me. He's a very

intelligent fellow. And as I've told you before, I tell you

again: it's not right for you not to go to the meetings, and

altogether to keep out of the district business. If decent people

won't go into it, of course it's bound to go all wrong. We pay

the money, and it all goes in salaries, and there are no schools,

nor district nurses, nor midwives, nor drugstores-nothing."

"Well, I did try, you know," Levin said slowly and unwillingly.

"I can't! and so there's no help for it."

"But why can't you? I must own I can't make it out. Indifference,

incapacity-I won't admit; surely it's not simply laziness?"

"None of those things. I've tried, and I see I can do nothing,"

said Levin.