It is a common trope that vision has the power to affect what it gazes upon - and there are no end of figures of speech that seem to back that up. Think: "She felt his eyes burning...", 'feel' and 'burning' suggest a tactile response to the gaze, and we are all aware of that uncomfortable feeling or prickling upon the nape of our neck, then turning to find somebody looking upon us. This has its precedent in antiquity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_theory_(vision) - that the eyes emit photons or rays responsible for seeing - and while we would generally laugh there are some recent psychological studies done that seem to suggest that we still unconsciously believe it: https://www.pnas.org/content/116/1/328.
a miscellany of completely unrelated thoughts...