The Weight of Unspoken Choices — The Brothers Karamazov

Ivan comes home in the same nervous frenzy as at the gate, brushes past Fyodor in the drawing-room, and spends the night in torment: urges to beat Smerdyakov, hatred even of Alyosha, and twice the infamous act of listening on the stairs while his father waits for Grushenka's knock.

He sleeps, wakes vigorous, packs for Moscow, and endures Fyodor's timber farce and insistence on Tchermashnya. Ivan cries that his father forces him there, then tells Smerdyakov he is going to Tchermashnya with a laugh he will remember; at Volovya he changes course, sends word he did not go, and catches the train while whispering that he is a scoundrel.

That evening Smerdyakov falls in an epileptic fit; Grigory is laid up; Fyodor locks himself in alone, thrilled that Grushenka may come. Ivan has fled the scene his soul already condemns, leaving the house stripped of witnesses and restraint.