The dreaded "Faulknerisation" of Mr David Trimble has been halted - at least for the time being. The anti-agreement unionists have been denied an opportunity to crow that the UUP leader enjoys the support of only a minority of unionists in the Assembly.
The turning of Roy Beggs jnr in yesterday's Assembly vote on government departments and crossBorder bodies was a major political triumph for the UUP leader.
Sources said it was achieved by a mixture of cajoling and fingerwagging, with a strong undertaking given to Mr Beggs that the leadership would hold the line on decommissioning.
While Mr Beggs had previously indicated that he was planning to vote against the leadership line, there was a coyness about unionist insiders when questioned on it over the last few days. It appears the efforts to persuade him to toe the party line continued until the early afternoon.
He is strongly influenced politically by his anti-agreement father, Roy Beggs snr, MP for East Antrim. But other unionists in young Roy's constituency take an assertively pro-agreement position.
Some idea of what Mr Beggs was promised could be gleaned from the statement he gave just after the vote.
He said he was satisfied, in the wake of Saturday's unanimous vote of the party executive on the issue, that the UUP would not allow the appointment of Sinn Fein ministers until the IRA had started a credible, verifiable "process" of decommissioning. He also said that under the legislation, power could not be transferred to a Northern Ireland executive in which unionists were not prepared to serve.
Meanwhile, to "D" or not to "D" - that is still the question; whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the collapse of the peace process or to take arms and dump them at the door of Gen John de Chastelain.
With the Assembly vote out of the way, the parties and governments will turn their minds to resolving the one remaining issue, the handover or destruction of paramilitary arms.
Everything else is in place, an elaborate and painfully-devised and negotiated structure ready to "go live" on March 10th or thereabouts. All that remains is the macho test on arms, the great game of chicken where the Ulster Unionists and the IRA wait for the other to blink first.
Neither the unionists nor the Provos are for turning.
Senior UUP sources told The Irish Times there were now effectively two weeks to break the impasse and there would be "intensive efforts" to do so during that time. The unionists see it in straightforward terms: "It's an either/or issue: either you do it or you don't."
The Assembly vote had isolated the arms question and the only issue on the minds of the parties and governments would be how to resolve it in a satisfactory way. Unionists see the answer to the problem in clear terms: "There is going to have to be a credible and verifiable start to the process of disarmament before Sinn Fein can take their seats." (There's that word "process" again.)
A return match between the Irresistible Force and the Immovable Object then, but senior unionists are calm and relaxed, with no suggestion of panic.
"We have been here before," they say.
Apparently intractable problems had been resolved in the past. However, a statement from the IRA was insufficient - weapons had to be destroyed under the gaze of Gen de Chastelain or his representatives.
Turn then to the republican side and you get some idea of the gulf that exists. Decommissioning in advance, to get Sinn Fein onto the executive? "There isn't a snowball's chance in hell," say republicans.
Looking for this from the IRA was equivalent to dumping the whole process. Bertie Ahern could say what he liked to the media - although republican sources, like some of the rest of us, have difficulty divining the Taoiseach's true meaning - but if he gave this message to the republican movement he would be saying his government was tearing up the agreement.
The Taoiseach might like to talk tough, just as he acted tough by bringing in new draconian laws after Omagh, but if he wanted to tell republicans to their face what, according to some reports, he was telling the media, then there would be certain inevitable consequences for the peace process.
That is the code republican sources use to say: push the IRA into a corner on this issue and the ceasefire collapses.
It is understood that Mr David Trimble is happier with Bertie Ahern's approach at the moment than he is with Mr Tony Blair - his meeting the Taoiseach at Lansdowne Road was particularly successful it seems. For republicans, the reverse seems to be the case.
Although the meeting between Mr Adams and Mr Blair yesterday was private, it can well be imagined that the Sinn Fein president was outlining a fairly stark message: decommissioning now would split the IRA. But maybe Mr Adams was open to the idea of a "process".
The latest indications are that the White House is getting involved again in a serious way: now that the Clinton inquisition is over, there is what sources call "a big uptake" in interest in the Irish situation in Washington.
"This President's legacy will include his work on Northern Ireland. He is very interested in ensuring that it will be continued and will come to a successful conclusion," White House sources said. Bill Clinton is still in touch with George Mitchell on a range of issues and is understood to have been briefed recently by the Senator on Northern Ireland.
While the US has been very punctilious about not intruding into Gen de Chastelain's area of responsibility, if the head of the decommissioning body makes a statement which might help to break the deadlock, the US will immediately become heavily involved in efforts to broker a solution.
To the pragmatic American mind, it is inconceivable that a stand-off on what is essentially a symbolic issue could be allowed to bring down the whole agreement and set the efforts of politicians, civil servants and others over so many years at naught.