Character lies more concealed, and out of the reach of common observation.

Even in his most extroverted moment, a man is concealed from others. For he cannot be fully known.

He was left a good deal to himself. He had been inclined to talkativeness, but gradually he became silent. He began to think of the difference between himself and others.

I know that He exists.
Somewhere – in silence –
He has hid his rare life
From our gross eyes.

We grant, although he had much wit,
He was very shy of using it.

Well I'm sure he's got a great many merits, but thus far they've been fairly effectively concealed from public view.

An essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.

His name never appeared in the papers. The world maintained its traditional wall Round the dead with their gold sunk deep as a well, Whilst his life, intangible as a Stock Exchange rumour, drifted outside.

We learned to let our faces hide
our selves, to speak our story in a private
tongue, the past a shadow in our bones.

As he was speaking, he kept reminding himself that he was going to a rendezvous and that not a living soul knew about it, or, probably, ever would. He led a double life — one in public, in the sight of all whom it concerned, full of conventional truth and conventional deception, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances, and another which flowed in secret. And, owing to some strange, possibly quite accidental chain of circumstances, everything that was important, interesting, essential, everything about which he was sincere and never deceived himself, everything that composed the kernel of his life, went on in secret, while everything that was false in him, everything that composed the husk in which he hid himself and the truth which was in him — his work at the bank, discussions at the club, his 'lower race,' his attendance at anniversary celebrations with his wife — was on the surface. He began to judge others by himself, no longer believing what he saw, and always assuming that the real, the only interesting life of every individual goes on as under cover of night, secretly. Every individual existence revolves around mystery, and perhaps that is the chief reason that all cultivated individuals insisted so strongly on the respect due to personal secrets.

Because he's hiding.

While fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist; obscurity is dark, ample, and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful, he alone is at peace.

It was cloaked to a great extent in secrecy almost. [...] You knew what it was about, but the script was a close-kept secret I think. Not many people had seen it, and I think they were worried that it would go the same way as War Games, which was made but never seen, so it was all quite mysterious really.

The true being of a man is hidden behind the wall of flesh and blood from the eyes of everyone else, including his own.