She had led a very quiet youth in the country, and the books that came down from Mudie's Library brought with them not only their own romance, but the romance of London. {2}
She had a real passion for reading (rare in her kind, who for the most part are more interested in the author than in his book, in the painter than in his pictures), and she invented a world of the imagination in which she lived with a freedom she never acquired in the world of every day.
When she came to know writers it was like adventuring upon a stage which till then she had known only from the other side of the footlights.
She saw them dramatically, and really seemed herself to live a larger life because she entertained them and visited them in their fastnesses (本意为堡垒，这里指作家的幽居).
She accepted the rules with which they played the game of life as valid for them, but never for a moment thought of regulating her own conduct in accordance with them.
Their moral eccentricities (古怪), like their oddities (古怪) of dress, their wild theories and paradoxes (悖论), were an entertainment which amused her, but had not the slightest influence on her convictions (坚定的信仰).
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