The freshness of her voice, its little tremble of modesty, the earnestness of its appeal, carried her youth quite home to Mr.Wogan's heart.

She was sweet with youth.

Wogan felt it more clearly as they stood together in the darkness than when he had seen her plainly in the lighted room, with youth mantling her cheeks and visible in the buoyancy of her walk.

Then she had been always the chosen woman.

Wogan could just see her eyes, steady and mysteriously dark, shining at him out of the gloom, and a pang of remorse suddenly struck through him.
That one step she was to take was across the threshold of a prison, it was true, but a prison familiar and warm, and into a night of storm and darkness and ice.