[...] On this particular occasion, I was aware of an intense aura emanating from someone whom I had never seen before, an intense, sexual aura, aimed precisely and accurately at my vacant being. “A man,” I wondered, “could there be a man in this meeting?” He looked weather-beaten, his flat, lined faced suffused with a self-consciously alert intelligence and a knowledge of sensual power. I had no idea who he was, and did not pursue the matter.

One lunch hour, as I was hurrying purposelessly across campus, sine ira ac studio, without anger or enthusiasm, the perfect legal-rational bureaucrat according to Max Weber, oblivious to my surroundings, a student importuned me on behalf of someone who stood motionless a few feet away and who required my attention. As we shook hands, Father Dr Patrick Gorman and the man in the meeting merged alarmingly into the same person.

Does “love at first sight” mean that you fall in love the instant you meet someone, or does the first sight occur when you suddenly fall in love with someone you may have met or known for any amount of time?