On this page S. doesn’t want to admit to himself that his connection to Sola is a romantic one. When Corbeau asks him, rhetorically, if he doesn’t “feel something”, S. responds “I sense a connection. What that connection may be, if  it even exists, is a mystery to me.” This confusing attraction S. feels towards Sola appears all throughout the book and unfortunately not much came of it until much later in their lives, instead of early on when they would have been able to developed a happy life together.

Jen expresses frustration towards Straka for, in the case that S. is Straka, not coming to the conclusion that he loved FCX earlier in his life. She writes:

If S. really is Straka then Straka was an idiot. Filomela should’ve left a lot earlier.