She was more beautiful than thy first love,
This lady by the trees  
                                        W.B.Yeats

The days go by just as days go by.  It is Saturday afternoon, and I am standing in front of de Kooning's 'Excavation' in one of the back galleries of the Art Institute. The confession of the great painting yields more to me today than ever before. I realize now how many lives and how much of life's darkness he is digging into and unearthing and dragging out into the cold bare light of day. It is as if he is saying,—we have been told there are things about our lives that are better left private, there are things about our lives that cannot be disclosed, but I am going to show what I have seen no matter what comes of it. In the end, I respect this honesty to the self more than anything;—but I know, the final task, the one true task, will remain uncompleted, even for a lifetime...then, I am distracted and cannot fail to observe, as a beautiful young woman enters the gallery. Although she possesses only average height, her stride reveals a persuasive grace in her subtle yet assured movement. She is dressed provocatively in the current fashion—a black wool mini-skirt wraps tightly around her slender, delicate legs, and her slight but well-shaped breasts are retained only by a lightweight gray sweater that silhouettes her form with terrible precision. She wears her dark pixie hair cut short, and as she crosses the room she flashes a look at nothing in particular. I am immediately taken by her solemn and penetrating eyes—grayish hazel eyes that betray in silent eloquence some sorrow in her life that I am forbidden to know. It is strange; she leaves the room.—