In the end things didn't fall apart, as many had feared, or come together precisely as the Taoiseach and British Prime Minister had planned.
But, bit by bit, the parties were nudged, cajoled or pressed towards agreement by Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern during five relentless days and nights of negotiation.
Working to a design devised last autumn by Seamus Mallon, they came as close as Northern parties could get to taking a vital step together towards the completion of the Belfast Agreement.
The week's discussions in Belfast showed what could be done when Sinn Fein dropped its Provo-speak for language that everyone could understand.
The party clearly accepted the principle of decommissioning on which the agreement insists and tacitly acknowledged both the primacy of politics and the redundancy of the IRA.
Its ambition, as a Northern historian observed, is to secure places, not only in a power-sharing executive in Belfast, but, eventually, in a coalition partnership with Fianna Fail.
The week showed, too, that David Trimble and his unionist colleagues were willing to take much greater risks to seize an opportunity which had last been on offer to their community a generation ago.
And the Irish and British governments, who'd invested time, effort and political reputations in the negotiation, began as persuaders and ended as guarantors of the project.
It was probably a more difficult achievement than the Belfast Agreement and, with the opponents of that agreement, hawk-like, watching developments, there are bound to be difficult days ahead.
How difficult may be gauged from a brief recall of the week's turbulent events and the eerie impression, at times, that it was all being done with mirrors.
Sinn Fein complained about the inclusion of Jeffrey Donaldson among the UUP negotiators. As if two of the republican movement's hard men, Gerry Kelly and Martin Ferris, were not among Sinn Fein's. And, in all probability, for the same reason.
The unionists, who had always maintained that Sinn Fein and the IRA were one, suddenly decided this wasn't so and demanded separate declarations on decommissioning from the party and the Provos.
By the same token, Sinn Fein, which had always refused to be tarred with the IRA brush, now insisted that to seek a separate declaration by the IRA was a slur on the party.
There was an air of Goldwynism about the row over Sinn Fein's proposals which Bairbre de Bruin, following her leader's example, thought too delicate to be committed to print. (The unionists, reasonably enough, thought Gerry Adams's verbal commitment wasn't worth the paper it was written on.)
But by Thursday afternoon Tony Blair was praising the seismic shifts that had left unionists ready to share power at all levels, and republicans willing to end violence.
Or, as Bertie Ahern put it, there had been progress and compromise, "things given that had not been given before." Otherwise, they'd all have been in Stormont until Christmas 12 months, waiting for someone to make the first move.
Seamus Mallon, who is all too familiar with the tedium of waiting for others to move (and aware of the consequences when they won't), detected change before most of his colleagues.
Neither the phrase "prior decommissioning" nor the denial of any obligation to decommission had been used all day, he reported to Prime Time on Wednesday night.
This was good news, but as the night wore on the news drifted from good to middling and worse as politicians and commentators came to the microphones of BBC and UTV.
Dermot Nesbitt of the UUP and Mitchel McLaughlin of Sinn Fein sounded, if not of one mind, at least anxious to avoid personal recrimination and contagious bitterness.
Two respected academic commentators, Paul Bew and Eamonn Phoenix, offered an insight into the background and ambitions of the protagonists.
With their successes in the local and European elections, Dr Phoenix said, Sinn Fein leaders saw themselves not only in government in the North but replacing the Progressive Democrats as Fianna Fail's partners in the Republic.
Firstly, they must overcome the resistance of sceptics in the UUP. And, as Prof Bew explained, their objections are not what some nationalist critics imagined.
"This is not about vanity. Or power. Or bigotry," he told Noel Thompson of the BBC." These are issues of moral principle in the party."
Sinn Fein's ambition explains its willingness to accept decommissioning explicitly for the first time - an historic shift, indeed, though the UUP seemed at first to have missed the point.
So, of course, did the commentators to whom Mitchel McLaughlin, Pat Doherty and, most clearly, Gerry Adams conveyed the party's decision to change.
The unionists may have been confused by the directness of the language after years of Provo-speak. At his press conference on Wednesday night, Mr Adams said the party was committed to the Belfast Agreement.
Then he simply listed the areas covered: constitutional, institutional, political, cultural, social, economic - and decommissioning.
No ifs or buts, he seemed to say, the question now was not whether decommissioning would happen, but when.
And all roads led to the Belfast Agreement and the conditions which its authors set with a subtlety that may yet come to be recognised as a fine feat of draughtsmanship.
To have been too specific then would have invited endless argument about details - as unmanageable as an umbrella in a high wind.
The grand declamatory style associated with constitutional flourishes would not have done. Too bland, they'd say, as they sharpened the axes of contradictory interpretations.
The authors chose a middle course: "We are committed to partnership, equality and mutual respect as the basis of relationships within Northern Ireland, between North and South and between these islands."
They were specific, too, when the occasion demanded. But, as we've seen in the run-up to this week's discussions, it didn't prevent the very people who'd negotiated the agreement from misreading it.
Predictably, given the importance of the issue, most of the misinterpretation arose from the section on decommissioning - six short paragraphs covering half of one short page.
"Participants," it said, "recall their agreement . . . that the resolution of the decommissioning issue is an indispensable part of the process of negotiation."
Linked to this reminder of the parties' commitment to the Mitchell Principles, there's a provision for dealing with anyone who breaks them.
"Those who hold office should use only democratic, non-violent means, and those who do not should be excluded or removed from office under these provisions."
It would be for the Assembly to decide, on a cross-community basis, whether a member of the executive had lost the confidence of the Assembly.
Two paragraphs later the participants again "reaffirm their commitment to the total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations" and "confirm their intention to . . . use any influence they may have, to achieve the decommissioning of all paramilitary arms within two years . . ."
So it had been agreed that resolution of the issue was an indispensable part of the negotiations - not, as some argued, a diversion to avoid the formation of a power-sharing executive.
Decommissioning meant "the total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations", not of security forces. But the agreement also looked forward to "the normalisation of security arrangements and practices".
The agreement set no date for the formation of an executive, except to say that it should happen "following the election of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister."
The date for the formation of the executive has now been set by both governments. The question is now is whether the Belfast Agreement will, indeed, be completed.