Men like this are a little restless in the company of others and though in the smoking-room of a ship or at the club bar they may be talkative and convivial, telling their story with the rest, joking and glad sometimes to narrate their unusual experiences, they seem always to hold something back.  They have a life in themselves that they keep apart, and there is a look in their eyes, as it were turned inwards, that informs you that this hidden life is the only one that signifies to them.  And now and then their eyes betray their weariness with the social round into which hazard or the fear of seeming odd has for a moment forced them.  They seem then to long for the monotonous solitude of some place of their predilection where they can be once more alone with the reality they have found.

-- W. Somerset Maugham, "Masterson"