When our eyes met, I felt that I was grow­ing pale. A curi­ous sen­sa­tion of ter­ror came over me. I knew that I had come face to face with someone whose mere per­son­al­ity was so fas­cin­at­ing that, if I al­lowed it to do so, it would ab­sorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art it­self.