The "as yet" introduces an ominous tone into this account, but it also reminds us
that the Creature as a voyeur hiding from the world, experiences that world only vicariously.
That his retreat is fragile and his faith in the future tentative are all that he
can be sure of. Elizabeth Lavenza, expressing a similarly impossible desire to escape
the world, had articulated similar sentiments at the beginning of this volume (II:1:9).