“Yes, you feel it, but you don’t give him your property,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, intentionally, as it seemed, provoking Levin.
There had arisen of late something like a secret antagonism between the two brothers-in-law; as though, since they had married sisters, a kind of rivalry had sprung up between them as to which was ordering his life best, and now this hostility showed itself in the conversation, as it began to take a personal note.
“I don’t give it away, because no one demands that from me, and if I wanted to, I could not give it away,” answered Levin, “and have no one to give it to.”
“Give it to this peasant, he would not refuse it.”
“Yes, but how am I to give it up? Am I to go to him and make a deed of conveyance?”
“I don’t know; but if you are convinced that you have no right....”
“I’m not at all convinced. On the contrary, I feel I have no right to give it up, that I have duties both to the land and to my family.”
“No, excuse me, but if you consider this inequality is unjust, why is it you don’t act accordingly?...”
“Well, I do act negatively on that idea, so far as not trying to increase the difference of position existing between him and me.”
“No, excuse me, that’s a paradox.”