David Trimble opened last Sunday's papers to widespread acclaim for his pro-agreement victory at the Ulster Unionist Council. As he returns from the US tomorrow morning he may find the tone of much press comment a good deal less celebratory.
None of the fundamentals, it is true, has altered in the past seven days. The expectation remains for a Yes vote in the referendums in Northern Ireland and the Republic on May 22nd.
And in his reading of his party's mood and disposition, Mr Trimble can claim vindication in terms of the crucial votes already cast by his policy-making executive and the ruling council.
However, the momentum which was so clearly with him last weekend has faltered, not least because Mr Trimble and the three MPs who support him have temporarily vacated the field of battle. That battle, for the very soul of unionism, was joined big-time in the House of Commons on Wednesday night, and 24 hours later in an Ulster Hall rally rich in symbolism for Unionist Ulster.
It was important to be at the Commons on Wednesday night as MPs approved in double-quick time the measures enabling the referendum and the Assembly elections. It was also a very sobering experience.
Mr Trimble had opted to keep a long-standing speaking engagement in the United States. Ken Maginnis had resumed his Cyprus holiday. John Taylor was somewhere in Europe. And while sightings of him were reported early in the day, Cecil Walker (perhaps prudently enough) never made it into the chamber.
It is arguable that none of this matters very much. As one civil servant put it, the legislation was going through anyway and Mr Trimble had spared himself a few hours of grief at the hands of his opponents. But in his absence, and that of his colleagues, the Ulster Unionist bench became home for the emergent united unionist coalition.
Mr Robert McCartney crossed the floor from the Labour benches to complete the line-up of eight Ulster Unionist, DUP and UKUP MPs implacably opposed to the Belfast Agreement.
One had the sense of the tensions here. These are not all natural allies. There are enmities, strong and long-standing. Clifford Forsythe was apparently resisting an invitation to join Roy Beggs, and `the two Willies' (Thompson and Ross) at the Ulster Hall the following night. The two reverends (Smyth and Paisley) occupied opposite ends of the bench and did not exactly look bosom buddies.
However, as the night wore on the antis began to enjoy themselves; intervening one in support of another; warming to the challenge of their Westminster isolation; balefully reminding the House they had witnessed cross-party consensus before for agreements which had promised peace and ended in failure.
Mr Trimble may rationalise that his presence, and that of Mr Taylor and Mr Maginnis, might needlessly have made things worse. It may indeed be fanciful to think that his presence would have imposed some constraint on his dissenting colleagues.
What can be said with certainty, however, is that in his absence Mr Ross and Mr Thompson attacked the agreement with relish. By close of play Mr Ross had declared the Prime Minister's letter to Mr Trimble on decommissioning paramilitary weapons worth less than a puff of smoke; Mr Thompson his pride that he had had no part of it, and that a majority of unionist MPs would be voting No in the referendum.
The East Londonderry and West Tyrone MPs were always going to go the distance alongside Dr Paisley, Mr Robinson and Mr McCartney. Mr Smyth and Mr Forsythe did not follow Mr Beggs to the Ulster Hall on Thursday.
And Mr Jeffrey Donaldson (who had to be at a meeting of his constituency party on Wednesday night) has, for the moment at least, elected to pursue his own brand of `constructive opposition' to the agreement as it stands.
For all that, one had the sense that Wednesday night marked the crossing of an important psychological barrier for the assorted individuals and groupings within the anti-agreement camp. More important and more instructive still, as they rehearsed their case we were treated to the full flavour of the arguments that will be carried to the doorsteps of every unionist household during the struggles of the next two months.
Even critics agreed that Mr McCartney was in impressive form, particularly in his defence of the RUC. And he was helped by some unbelievable crassness on the Labour benches.
It is often a clever device for groups of MPs to babble among themselves, and find something undeclared to laugh about, when they want to unsettle a troublesome colleague or disregard an unpopular argument.
But it is far from clever when the subject matter is the murder of some 300 police officers; the proposed wholesale release of paramilitary prisoners; or the retention of private armies by those paramilitaries as their political representatives prepare to enter government.
The future of the RUC, prisoner releases, decommissioning, and the prospect of Mr Gerry Adams in the government of Northern Ireland were the issues to which Mr McCartney and his colleagues frequently returned on Wednesday night. And these are the issues, according to sources in the Trimble camp, too, which are dominating debate on the unionist ground in Northern Ireland.
They are issues with tremendous potency, offering the ingredients of a highly-effective negative campaign. Mr Trimble, too, has negatives to play.
His pro-agreement campaign will doubtless cast Dr Paisley and company in the last ditch; a collective conspiracy to return to the past and deny hope for a better future. And the opinion polls at least suggest a public willingness this time to opt for hope.
But selling that hope, building and sustaining that hope, present the pro-agreement forces with a complex task. To get to this point Mr Trimble himself had to make a massive leap of the imagination, to embrace change and the possibility, too, that his enemies were also in the business of change.
The UUP leader made major gains during the negotiation process, particularly on the constitutional issues. The prize he wants to offer the electorate is a settled constitutional position for Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom, and a new political dispensation which, if Sinn Fein is to join it, spells the effective end of armed-force republicanism.
However, he has also to acknowledge and defend the considerable compromises he has made to the achievement of that goal.
It is arguable that Mr Trimble might not have been able to complete the negotiation process had he signalled too much in advance. But that lack of preparation of the wider unionist community left him with a significantly harder task to perform in the short time that remains before the referendum and assembly votes.
Two weeks into the electoral battle, it has to be said that the Yes campaign has yet to take convincing or compelling shape. Mr Trimble's allies will hope to find him refreshed and ready for the fray after his short American break. It will be his last for some time.
The real David Trimble, by Ruth Dudley Edwards: page 10