Can the IRA ceasefire hold? In Belfast last week a nationalist friend, not a Sinn Fein supporter, said to me, "If any more Catholics are killed you can kiss the whole peace process goodbye." It is easy to understand the roots of her anger.
The present leadership of the republican movement emerged from the trauma of 1969, the vulnerability of the nationalist community in Belfast and the lack of any credible force to defend it from loyalist attacks. The graffiti "IRA - I Ran Away" has not been forgotten, least of all by Gerry Adams.
The random nature of the loyalist attacks is seen as part of a familiar pattern - terrorising the whole Catholic community to exert unionist political leverage on the two governments. The IRA ceasefire cannot be taken for granted. But if there is one gleam of hope in the darkness of recent events, it is that the republican movement as a whole seems determined to hold to its political strategy and has been able to steady its own ranks.
The real threat to that commitment comes not from loyalist violence but from a crisis of confidence in the leadership of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, due to the events of recent weeks. It is not just that the Propositions for Heads of Agreement are perceived as pulling back from the proposals of the Framework Document.
There is also the fact that the Framework Document itself is regarded by many grassroots republicans as suspect, designed to deliver a settlement which not only falls far short of a united Ireland but frustrates progress towards it.
Most observers do not see the Propositions for Heads of Agreement in this light. The document published last week appears to me to contain all the elements for a settlement which have been widely accepted since the talks initiated by Peter Brooke.
The three strands are intact and this means that there cannot be a purely internal settlement. The language has been fudged a bit in order to help David Trimble to stay in the talks. But there have also been gains that could as easily be interpreted as helpful to Sinn Fein, notably the commitment that constitutional change will include amendments to Section 75 of the Government of Ireland Act as well as Articles 2 and 3.
But after talking to a number of republicans this week - including committed supporters of the peace process - I accept that there is widespread suspicion, and that this stems from the manner in which the two governments launched their proposals as much as the document itself. It is seen as having been drafted in a hurry and under pressure from unionists.
The point has been made to me that, whereas David Trimble was consulted at every point, Sinn Fein was left in almost complete ignorance of what was going on. The leak in the Daily Telegraph appears to have taken both Sinn Fein and senior members of the SDLP by surprise. There are dark mutterings about Irish officials meeting unionists and failing to consult with Sinn Fein.
ALL this has undermined, quite seriously, the position of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. It was always on the cards that the most difficult moment of the present negotiations would come when the Sinn Fein leadership had to persuade its own supporters to accept a deal which fell far short of traditional republican objectives.
But at least the Sinn Fein leaders might reasonably have expected that any agreement would be reached in close co-operation with the Irish Government and the SDLP, and that the political clout of the so-called `pan-nationalist front' would underpin it.
This was the basis for the original Hume-Adams initiative: Sinn Fein would be brought in from the cold and, as part of an alliance which included the Irish Government, could pursue its objectives through exclusively political methods.
Now many people in Sinn Fein think that this alliance is falling apart. Serious differences between the party and the SDLP have emerged in public. Worse still, the Irish Government seems prepared virtually to ignore Gerry Adams's concerns when dealing with the British government.
Inevitably, given the whole history of the process and the psychology of the people involved, there is a deep suspicion that, with an IRA ceasefire in the bag, the Irish Government no longer sees its relationship with Sinn Fein as a major priority. This raises the fear that the party could become increasingly isolated in the talks.
This may smack of paranoia to outsiders. Many people will agree with David Andrews that the negotiations must involve parity of pain as well as gain for all involved, and that Sinn Fein should have prepared its supporters in advance that this was going to happen. But that ignores the situation on the ground, the fear in the community which Sinn Fein represents and the fact that the acquiescence, at least, of that community will be necessary to ensure a lasting settlement.
It also ignores the terrible, oppressive weight of history. On Tuesday evening, I went to the first public meeting of the Thirty Two-County Sovereignty Committee. It was held, by coincidence, on the same day as the Taoiseach announced the Government's plans for commemorating 1798, but this was not the date on the minds of those who braved the rain to attend the meeting in Dundalk.
Every one of the speakers noted that this was the eve of the 79th anniversary of the inaugural meeting of the First Dail on January 21st, 1919. I had expected bitter public rhetoric, personal attacks on Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. Instead, the speeches were quiet and dignified, and criticism of the Sinn Fein leadership was made as much in sorrow as in anger.
These were former comrades who have given many years of their lives to the republican movement and for them what is happening now is the latest episode in an old story. Speakers quoted Liam Mellowes, Cathal Brugha, Dorothy McArdle's History of the Irish Republic to argue that Gerry Adams has been duped and tricked into compromising the ideal of a sovereign, independent 32-county Ireland.
The immediate reaction of most readers will be to say that these people are living in a time warp, that all this has nothing to do with the present efforts to reach a settlement based on the principle of consent. But the suspicion that the whole peace process - from the Downing Street Declaration through the acceptance of the Mitchell Principles to the present talks - amounts to a trap which the British and Irish governments have baited to lure the republican movement into abandoning its principles resonates very deeply with many grassroots activists.
Gerry Adams is engaged in trying to convince them that it is possible to draw a line under this history, while preserving Sinn Fein's ability to pursue its ideal of a united Ireland. He needs the help of the Irish Government in this task.