The week has been heavy with irony and foreboding. There is an eerie symmetry in events, which began with political and legal debate as to who was entitled to talk about peace and ended with a young man, hands tied, lying dead in a derelict house on the shores of Lough Neagh.
Which goes to show that not everyone is convinced the future lies through political negotiation or action in the courts - and underlines the fears of church leaders who pleaded yesterday for a calm reaction to the decisions of ministers and judges.
The exclusion of Sinn Fein from the multi-party talks was inevitable long before Mo Mowlam and David Andrews announced the decision. Indeed, it was impossible to imagine the parties with paramilitary associations on either side escaping sanctions once the rules had been written and agreed and compliance made a condition of participation.
The object of the negotiations, after all, was a settlement which would allow the people of these islands to live peacefully together. As the parties moved towards a settlement, the self-proclaimed role of the paramilitaries was bound to diminish.
Ideally, by the time a settlement is reached, the paramilitaries should have withered away. Conditions, however, are far from ideal and, given what happened in the South after the Civil War, it would be foolish to expect a tidy and orderly departure.
But it's not only the Irish and British governments or the constitutional parties, North and South, or churches and community leaders who look forward to life after the paramilitaries.
A Queen's University/Rowntree Survey report, The Search for a Settlement, produced by Fortnight Educational Trust, showed that 70 per cent of Protestants and 67 per cent of Catholics in Northern Ireland considered the disbanding of all paramilitary groups essential to a lasting settlement.
This flies in the face of the opinion, carefully fostered by Sinn Fein and adopted by many commentators, that without the paramilitaries a settlement could not be achieved.
Ironically, it was an argument implicit in the week's manoeuvring at Dublin Castle, where the party's explicit position was that it had no connection with what is by definition the other wing of the republican movement.
It was not the only feature of the Sinn Fein case which was presented with dexterity and skill: complaints about kangaroo courts, summary justice and unionist lynch mobs come oddly from a party which has spent so much time trying not to condemn punishment beatings and the murder of dissidents.
But these complaints were repeated so often and with such skill that by the end of the week hardened cynics had begun to swallow the myth of Sinn Fein as victims of persecution by ogres familiar to American audiences - the British and the unionists.
On this occasion, the ogres' roles were somewhat different from those usually assigned them: the British - contrary to Tony Blair's better instincts - were taking their instructions from the unionists.
What was more difficult to explain as the week wore on was the attitude of Bertie Ahern and the Government. David Andrews began by saying that, in the matter of the murders of Brendan Campbell and Robert Dougan, the IRA had a case to answer.
Mr Ahern, no doubt, listened to complaints from Dublin Castle about the Chief Constable of the RUC. But when the Taoiseach consulted the Garda Commissioner he was advised that the officers agreed.
Here was something which would be more difficult to explain in Washington. The Taoiseach presided over a Fianna Fail-led coalition. Neither he nor Mr Andrews could be said to have been in cahoots with the unionists.
Yet Mr Ahern and Mr Andrews refused to believe either that the IRA had nothing to do with the murders of Mr Campbell and Mr Dougan or that Sinn Fein had nothing to do with the IRA.
Mr Adams called it disgraceful and, in ominous tones, invited Sinn Fein's followers to show their anger in a disciplined way. (Martin McGuinness had started the week with what sounded like a threat of immediate and terrible war if the governments' decision went against the party.)
Both Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness said their party was out but not down; and their efforts to keep Sinn Fein in the negotiations were nothing if not strenuous. They were wholly unconvincing.
The claim that Sinn Fein has nothing to do with the IRA has obviously not reached the organisers of the party's rally at Vinegar Hill this weekend. The rally is clearly meant to make a connection between Sinn Fein and the rising of 1798. So Wolfe Tone is featured on the posters advertising the event.
As if to mark the continuity between the 18th and 20th centuries, Constance Markievicz is there too. So is Bobby Sands, reminding supporters of a period when Sinn Fein made no bones about its IRA connection.
But the fourth face on the Sinn Fein poster is that of Volunteer Ed O'Brien of Gorey, who was killed when the bomb he was carrying on a London bus exploded, shortly after the bombing of Canary Wharf marked the end of the IRA's ceasefire in 1996.
Given the importance the republican movement attaches to symbolism, the inclusion of Volunteer O'Brien is significant. Here is someone who died on an IRA bombing mission, not in the distant past but two years ago; and, though the Sinn Fein president disavows the IRA, the rally's organisers feel free to honour an IRA action and an IRA activist at a meeting at which Mr Adams is guest speaker.
Sinn Fein cannot be both the IRA's political wing or partner and a party which stands alone. It must be one or the other. If it maintains its connection with a body designed for violence, it has no place in a process designed to put an end to violence.
If Sinn Fein acknowledges its history and place in the republican movement but wants to move into the democratic arena, as members of the movement have done, generation after generation, then there must be a place for the party there too.
David Adams of the loyalist Ulster Democratic Party said on RTE's Later on 2 last week that a time would come when those who had been engaged in violence or supported it must leave behind the 20 per cent who were not prepared to make the transition.
This is a crucial time in the multi-party talks, as the church leaders have pointed out. Seamus Mallon, whose courage and wisdom are not in doubt, has said the governments are working on papers which should be available to the parties by mid-March. They are determined to complete negotiations by the end of May.
Now is the time for those who hope to influence the future of this island to redouble their efforts.