For three years Roland Lee had withdrawn from his former haunts and companions. No one knew now where he lived: he had not exhibited: he had resigned his membership at the club: he had gone out of sight. Many London men every year go out of sight. It is quite easy. You have only to leave off going to the well-known places of resort: very soon--so soon that it is humiliating only to think of it--men cease asking where you are: then they cease speaking of you: you are clean gone out of their memory--you and your works--it is as if the sea had closed over you. There is not left a trace or a sign of your existence. Perhaps, now and then, something may revive your name: some little adventure may be remembered: some frolic of youth--for the rest--nothing: Silence: Oblivion. It does, indeed, humiliate those who look on. When such an accident revived the memory of Roland Lee, one would ask another what had become of him. And no one knew. But, of course, he had gone down--down--down. When a man disappears it means that he sinks. He had gone out of sight: therefore he had gone under. Yet, when you climb, you can never get so high as to be invisible. Even the President, R.A., is not invisible. Again, the higher that a balloon soars, the smaller does it grow; but the higher a man climbs up the Hill of Fame the bigger does he show. It is quite certain that when a man has disappeared he has sunk. The only question--and this can never be answered--is, what becomes of the men who sink? One man I heard of--also, like Roland, an artist--who has been traced to a certain tavern, where he fuddles himself every evening, and where you may treat with him for the purchase of his pictures at ten shillings--ay, or even five shillings--apiece. And two scholars--scholars gone under--I heard of the other day. They now reside in the same lodging-house. It is close to the Gray's Inn Road. One lives in the garret, and the other occupies the cellar. In the evening they get drunk together and dispute on points of the finer scholarship. But this only accounts for three. And where are all the rest? Of Roland Lee nobody knew anything. There was no story or scandal attached to him: he was no drinker: he was no gambler: he was no profligate. But he had vanished.