tears . . . streamed from my eyes
Even as Victor thinks of himself as reacting with compassion to
the assumed plight of Elizabeth, it is clear to any reader that
he is actually weeping for himself. His giving in at last to his
feelings is thus ironized, for rather than opening him to a
renewal of his emotional life, his convulsive weeping results
from a maudlin theatrical representation of his own death that
wholly mistakes the threat to his future wife.
