A week may be a long time in normal politics, but it is only the blink of an eye in the Northern peace process. Some journalists have now been stationed in the car-park at Castle Buildings, awaiting developments, since 1996. "I've wasted the best years of my youth here," one reporter said, only half in jest.
The urgency is mainly on the republican side. In statements and briefings they sought to convey the message that the deal had to be done this week. "Give me your answer, do," was their request to David Trimble.
The Ulster Unionist Party started out with a deliberate policy of playing this game long. They kept putting off the day of decision and reassuring their followers with hardline statements to the effect that Sinn Fein would never darken the door of a ministerial Mercedes until their IRA associates handed over Kalash nikovs, Semtex, detonators, timing devices and anything else that was going, to Gen de Chastelain, in full view of the TV cameras.
While there was no stipulation about carrying a white flag, the republican paramilitaries were very quick to deduce that surrender, not reconciliation, was the name of this particular game.
The rest of us might not see it like that, but we are not the people who have been holding Northern Ireland hostage for the last 30 years. Morality lectures are the last thing you give the man with the balaclava who is holding a gun to the head of a bank customer.
A better tactic is to portray in clear, concrete and attainable terms the advantages of a different and more pacific course of action.
Does politics work? This is the question that still remains unanswered among the rank-and-file of a movement which generated mayhem for three decades in the North and has now decided to examine other possibilities.
The leadership is in no doubt. Martin McGuinness is your classic Irish republican: he has now chosen the political path. Hallelujah, say the SDLP, Dublin, London and Washington. It's a trap and a con-job, some unionists still maintain.
In one sense it is very understandable why the majority community in the North would not want to rush into a coalition arrangement with those who have for so long been trying to overthrow the state by violent means.
Anyone who reads that magnificent chronicle, Lost Lives, by David McKittrick and his colleagues, will have a renewed appreciation of the wounds and the hurt inflicted on both sides during the long conflict.
These will not be remedied by giving everyone happy pills and putting them round the same cabinet table.
Even now there has still been no proper grieving or memorial: a start could be made by having a copy of this book, which gives an account of every death in the Troubles, on the shelves in all schools on the island.
But while delay, hesitation and doubt on the part of unionists may be understandable, there are many who question whether they are wise.
The shadow of a gunman still looms large over the efforts of Gerry Adams and his colleagues to get out from under 200 years of violent history.
Loyalist leaders, too, live under a cloud: one of them, remonstrating about the anti-agreement activities of a prominent politician said: "If this breaks down, we go back to war; he just goes back to middle-class leafy-land."
The decommissioning fever which had just about everyone, including the media, in its spell for so long may be passing at last. The reality is beginning to hit home that it is not worth wrecking the IRA and loyalist ceasefires - still largely intact despite all the lapses - for the dubious comfort of taking a stand on the questionable principle that terrorists must hand over a consignment of weapons today which they can easily replace tomorrow.
The person least to be envied in the politics of these islands today is David Trimble. A strategic thinker with a formidable intellect, he is not gifted with the backslapping, hail-fellow-well-met skills that are needed at this juncture.
I am indebted to Mr Alan Dukes of Fine Gael who once described this as "the smelly armpit side of politics". But sturdy, stolid unionists who think in everyday, practical terms need to be cajoled and reassured at this point in time.
The word is that the Ulster Unionist Council, 860-strong, will have to make the final judgment on the deal worked out at Castle Buildings.
Despite the Brezhnev-era media blackout in force at Castle Buildings, it has been possible to glean that Sinn Fein is prepared to promise a great deal in terms of seeking an end to violence. The IRA, on the other hand, is promising nothing but is giving Sinn Fein the all-important seal of approval, the republican quality mark.
Most members of the IRA, it has been authoritatively learnt, do not want to go back to what they call "the war". But the leadership cannot say this without risking a major split leading to a bloodbath. That is why the republican movement's offer of a peaceful future has to be "filtered" through Sinn Fein.
The aforementioned Martin McGuinness gave an intriguing interview to the Observer in September 1997 where he spoke of the "love" which developed between both sides in the South African conflict once they entered into serious negotiations. It was unusual language for a man with his stern reputation. But it has been possible to discern the growth of something not unlike friendship in the contacts between republicans and unionists over the past 10 weeks.
Amazingly, one now hears that republican leaders have come to admire and respect Trimble's "courage". There is still some residual distrust and an underlying fear on both sides of what Hollywood movies used to call "the old double-cross".
There are the first slight shoots of friendship. But not love, just yet. As the song says: "You can't hurry love."