IN LONDON and Dublin last night the sense was of doors closing on the republican movement. The reference to the "sense" rather than to the sound is deliberate.
For neither government wants finally, definitively to write Sinn Fein out of the equation. They didn't after the Docklands bomb" on February 9th a fact painfully observed by those unionists who fear each bomb will inevitably be followed by fresh concessions toe the republicans.
Even yesterday, there were some content to believe that the Manchester attack was the intended precursor of a new IRA ceasefire. And there will be those arguing against a "knee jerk" reaction to what could so easily have been a day of mass murder.
The sophisticates of the "peace process" rely on the assurance that nothing is ever as it appears. But public perceptions and the underlying political realities would appear to be against them.
The media have stuck with the jargon of "the peace process despite the evidence of the ceasefire's collapse.
However, the cause of accuracy has already forced us to abandon the official designation of the Stormont talks. And those "multi party" talks surely represent a forced reversal to the political process which preceded what Mr Adams likes to call "the Irish peace initiative".
Mr Fergus Finlay, the Tanaiste's close adviser, recently said that talks without Sinn Fein wouldn't be "worth a penny candle". He may well regret that declaration. And Mr Bruton and Mr Spring will certainly be under powerful pressure now to prove it wrong.
Time and again the Taoiseach and the Tanaiste like Mr Major and Sir Patrick Mayhew have vowed the process will proceed "with or without" the republicans. Frankly, few believed them.
Getting Sinn Fein to the table was the name of the game. And unionists like Mr Robert McCartney and the Rev Ian Paisley were hardly deranged in their that that was precisely why Dublin placed such priority on securing the key role in the process for Mr George Mitchell.
But the IRA has elected not to play the peace game. And Mrs David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist leader, is in a potentially powerful position as he seeks to reduce Mr Mitchell's role and influence, stiffen the entry requirements for Sinn Fein and insist that the process moves ahead without them, pending a new "ceasefire and subsequent verification of it.
Republicans are almost certainly wrong to imagine that the Docklands bomb secured the June 10th "fixed date" for the start of the intended all party negotiations.
That was implicit in the elective process which Mr Major first proposed in response to the Mitchell report. But it is hard to imagine that any republican thinks Saturday's bombing can ease Sinn Fein's path to the talks table.
On the contrary, the D word now appear to be written.
Indeed the Taoiseach yesterday came close to placing decommissioning at the top of a revised "agenda. In addition to "an unconditional and irrevocable" ceasefire, Mr Bruton spoke of the need for a "visible commitment" from Sinn Fein and the IRA in terms of the recommendations of the Mitchell report.
As unionist politicians demanded the introduction of internment, republicans may have detected a hint of threat in the Taoiseach's assertion that the Irish State had never shirked its duty in face of threats of violence.
Even if that position is "finessed" and softened over the next few days, the Government will be hard pressed to resist Mr Trimble's demand for some means of measuring a commitment to disarmament should the IRA announce a cease fire and Sinn Fein join the process.
At Wednesday's plenary session at Stormont, the UUP leader is expected to press the point that, since Mr Mitchell accepted the bona fides of the "paramilitary" parties just weeks before the IRA ceasefire collapsed, it should not be left to him to satisfy himself about their good intentions before launching the decommissioning sub committee intended to proceed in parallel with negotiations in the three Strands.
Last week's opening session left Mr Trimble with a strengthened hand to play. He defied his unionist rivals, accepted Mr Mitchell as independent chairman and was credited with saving the process from collapse.
As the week progressed, it became clear that the murder of Garda Jerry McCabe had the potential at least to rewrite the political agenda. The combination of that murder and the Manchester bombing would appear to put the matter beyond doubt.
Mr Bruton's anger yesterday was quiet, restrained and powerful. His personal political instincts have clearly strained against his obligation, as Taoiseach, to act as guarantor of the nationalist interest.
As one Irish source put it last night. "The IRA have created a situation which plays to Bruton's instincts and gives Trimble opportunity".
Sinn Fein will be watching anxiously to see if Mr Trimble divines the opportunity and decides to take it.