In the dark, the faces of the platform party were clearer than of people in the street, but you could feel the crowd's weariness.
In the immediate aftermath of the first IRA "cessation of military activities" in August 1994, what republican sympathisers on the Falls expressed, at best, was a sense of relief.
Standing among them, the mood felt more like anti-climax, as it did earlier up the road outside Connolly House.
The champagne somebody passed to Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness as they relayed the IRA announcement didn't work. Bubbles overflowing and the McGuinness grin didn't match the Andersonstown mood.
All day, practised extras had followed the star turns to clap in the right places. But at night, a mile down the Falls in the oldest republican heartland, Adams didn't get even a rustle of applause when he told a modest-sized crowd that the IRA had stepped back, and now it was up to them: "This is your struggle, you own it."
If the British government failed to respond, they might have to take to the streets to make their feelings plain. There were clearly no takers for that proposition. The leaders said then - as they say still - that the struggle for a united Ireland continued.
But the Falls had been struggling long enough. The comparative hush that greeted the ceasefire testified to the exhaustion that underlay the republican "peace project".
The Canary Wharf bomb 17½ months later has for some wiped from the record that day 10 years ago: next Tuesday's anniversary has no resonance, the "cessation" of July 20th, 1997, was the real beginning of the negotiations that produced the Good Friday Agreement.
Many, mostly unionist, have another perspective: that the arrangement republicans and the DUP hammer out now is what matters. One way or another, what happened later has relegated August 31st, 1994. It remains a remarkable moment.
Yet perhaps the least remarkable aspect was how downbeat it felt.
Many were tense with the strain of keeping hope in check. Many of us shared memories of previous ceasefires, loyalist as well as republican: the IRA's three-day break at Christmas; the 1974 "truce" that disintegrated into renewed murderousness by republicans, loyalists and undercover soldiers long before it was declared over.
To let down your guard straightaway was unthinkable.
Some, who for decades had wanted the IRA to stop, thought that loyalists would never be disciplined enough to call and maintain their own ceasefire, that the British government would fail to tell police and soldiers to behave differently.
Some, of course, were outraged at the very idea of killers expecting reciprocation, much less celebration when they announced that they would stop killing.
Some were appalled at the prospect of republicans coming in from the cold.
But over 10 sometimes frustrating years, much has changed.
The DUP voiced even more outrage at the IRA ceasefire than Ulster Unionists, although it was UU leader Jim Molyneaux who called it the most destabilising development imaginable.
UUs learned to preface condemnation with the assertion that of course they welcomed a genuine peace, while Ian Paisley went on investing the word with all the considerable vocal contempt at his command.
In this, as in much else, the DUP has evolved. The party waited in the wings while David Trimble "conceded" the reform of policing, the release of prisoners. They talked pugnaciously about "clawing back" what Trimble allegedly abandoned, but for some time now have said that alas, much is irrecoverable.
They condemned the UUs for helping to set up power-sharing but participated in the same administration, and are now engaged in a process which they know will have them sharing power with Gerry Kelly, if not Gerry Adams.
They claim now that the 1998 agreement is "wrecked" and must be "replaced", though the essence of any future settlement will always be equal treatment for the two main identities.
Some insisted that the IRA "sued for peace", as Gerry Adams described it, because they were beaten, honeycombed by British intelligence. Yet the announcement on August 31st, 1994 plainly, admittedly, took police and army by surprise.
The last person the IRA killed before August 31st was Martin Cahill, in Dublin. Ten days earlier they shot a part-time soldier, Trelford Withers, in his butcher's-shop in Crossgar.
On the day of the ceasefire, the UVF shot a Catholic, Sean MacDermott, in Antrim. Next day the UDA shot another Catholic, John O'Hanlon, in north Belfast.
The 185 killings since have been as futile as those before, no more, no less.
After so many deaths, so much pain, grief and betrayal, no ceasefire was ever going to light up the skies. But if the coming talks fail, the penalty is no longer the dread of war.