As the Northern Ireland Bill made its way through the House of Commons three weeks ago, the Ulster Unionist deputy leader, Mr John Taylor, predicted October as "crunch time" for the Belfast Agreement. Even as they left for a well-earned summer break, senior Irish strategists privately conceded real fears that the crisis could come sooner - in September - as nationalist and republican pressure inevitably built on Mr David Trimble to bring the institutions of government prescribed by the agreement into being in "shadow" form. In the event, August again proved the most wicked month.
For the people of Omagh - facing lives horribly handicapped and disfigured by bereavement or brutal injury - there will be little thought of politics. In the wider community, too, there will be weariness at the thought that politics can ever bring an end to the suffering and pain. And in the unionist community in particular there will be those - more of them than before - who can but spit the words "politics" and "peace process" with derision and contempt.
One man interviewed in the aftermath of Saturday's mass murder professed his shame that he had voted Yes last May, and avowed himself "a No man" hereafter. Neither government can bow to such sentiment - yet neither can they ignore it.
For some time now senior unionist politicians have been claiming precisely such a shift in opinion among some of those who voted - in many cases against their instinct, and with painful heart - for Mr Tony Blair, Mr David Trimble and the Belfast Agreement. And there have been objective grounds for believing it might indeed be so. The accelerated scale of so-called "punishment" attacks, culminating in the murder of Andrew Kearney, merely compounded the instinctive unionist distaste for early prisoner releases and reinforced the sense of the process as a one-way street.
At the very least the British and Irish governments have sounded unconvincing in their assertions that it would be no such thing - and that the tests for former paramilitary parties benefiting from the agreement would inevitably grow more rigorous over time. But, from the perspective of many unionists, it has been worse than that. London and Dublin have not only appeared unmoved by the growing concerns of what might be called middle Ulster, their reaction has sometimes seemed to border on the contemptuous.
That certainly was the widespread view when Dublin chose to release six IRA prisoners last month, at the end of the very week in which Dr Mo Mowlam was vilified for confirming that IRA, UDA and UVF prisoners would be eligible for early release. With all the subtlety of their trade, senior British sources confided that Dr Mowlam found the Irish announcement "unhelpful". Imagine then the reaction of unionists in the North. Imagine, too, the disquiet among unionists when they see governments turn a deaf ear to the concerns expressed - not by Dr Ian Paisley or Mr Jeffrey Donaldson, but by Mr Trimble, and by his deputy, Mr Taylor.
Before departing on holiday, the First Minister declared he was not persuaded of the commitment of the republican movement to purely peaceful and democratic means, saying that - confronted with the issue at that point - he would have to seek Sinn Fein's exclusion from the proposed Executive. By the time he had flown to northern Cyprus, Mr Taylor had announced his atleast temporary withdrawal of support for the very Bill bringing the provisions of the agreement into being.
That was the situation confronting the British and Irish governments before Saturday - Northern Ireland's blackest day. But, if Mr Taylor had left Mr Trimble increasingly isolated just three short weeks ago, the Ulster Unionist leader's isolation last night looked virtually complete. Certainly the view of his leading critics is that Mr Trimble will now require something "still more tangible" from the IRA and Sinn Fein if he is to keep his side of the deal done on Good Friday.
Until last week the disposition of key players in the British and Irish establishments had appeared relatively sanguine. Some, to be sure, were simply (and perfectly naturally) demob happy as they took their summer holidays. Moreover, they reckoned, all previous dire predictions had come to nought. The referendum had passed muster with a handsome 71 per cent.
And for all that a majority of unionist first preference votes were actually cast for declared anti-agreement candidates, Mr Trimble had the necessary numbers to make the Assembly work. For all his public utterances - and the increasingly unpredictable behaviour of his deputy - the working assumption was that Mr Trimble would return refreshed and ready to do the business.
Such complacency seemed positively dangerous in the early, dull dog days of August. But any doubting its folly now need do little more than ponder the words of Mr Kevin McNamara, the former Labour spokesman on Northern Ireland, who yesterday urged Mr John Hume to spell out to Mr Gerry Adams and Mr Martin McGuinness precisely what is at stake: "Not just the humiliation of the unionists, and the fall of Trimble, but the downfall of the agreement, with terrible consequences."
Mr McNamara is not alone in thinking that the Irish Government and the American administration - having forged the path for Sinn Fein's entry into democratic politics, and into government - are now in position to call in the favours.
Barely a week ago the Sinn Fein president declared that he was under no pressure and that Mr Trimble's problems were not for him to resolve. Dublin and Washington must surely leave him in no doubt that Mr Trimble's difficulties present them with a problem of the greatest magnitude. Like London, they will welcome the unequivocal terms in which Mr Adams condemned Saturday's foul atrocity by renegade republicans. But all three governments will now surely be at one in making plain to the Provisionals that the willingness to condemn represents but the start of a process leading to decommissioning and other already overdue confidence-building measures required by the agreement.