AS THE Irish representatives arrived for Thursday's meeting at the Northern Ireland Office, Sir Patrick Mayhew, who waited on the steps to greet them, could he heard murmuring: "I wonder which side Dick is on?"
It was, no doubt, an innocent inquiry. But, given the touchiness of the occasion, officials on both teams must have been relieved that it was the Channel 4 audience who heard it and not Mr Spring.
As it was, Sir Patrick hovered by the right car door. Mr Spring smiled bleakly at the man he'd accused of resorting to the tactics of divide and conquer, and Michael Ancram mingled nimbly with other members of the visiting party.
Equilibrium was all butt restored as the governments cautiously examined each other's positions, including those which at first had caused alarm and confusion - John Major's surprisingly timed support for a Northern election, for example.
Mr Spring was prepared to listen to the reasoning behind the proposal. Sir Patrick was willing to hear the Tanaiste's objections. And the case for all party talks by the end of the month.
But there's no point pretending that suspicions don't linger, especially when such a thorough piece of work as the report prepared by George Mitchell and his colleagues is set aside as casually as it was by Mr Major.
Noel Thompson, on BBC's Hearts and Minds last night, is not alone in his desire to heard Martin McGuinness on Mr Mitchell's six principles. Mr McGuinness hinted at tactical reasons for refusing to answer and had the Major treatment of Mitchell as an excuse.
Thursday was not a good day RTE and BBC opened their early evening news bulletins with shots of white faced men in dark jackets squaring up to the RUC over the coffin of the murdered INLA leader, Gino Gallagher.
FURTHER afield, Gerry Adams was looking forward to having lunch in the White House interrupted by Bill Clinton, though how the President had taken the reception given the Mitchell report - poor in London, lukewarm on the Falls road - remained open to conjecture.
But it was in Dublin Castle, at the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, the assembly established to lead Sinn Fein into the democratic system, that the darkest clouds had begun to gather overnight.
Judge Catherine McGuinness was disturbed to discover that someone had chosen to leak part of an important report, on which the forum had been working for the best part of a year, to The Irish Times.
Entitled Paths to a Political Settlement in Ireland, it was a paper to which all but Sinn Fein and (for different reasons) the Green Party were prepared to subscribe.
But Sinn Fein's difficulty, which the other 11 parties in the forum had tried hard to overcome or reduce, was no ordinary obstacle to political progress.
It went to the heart of the democratic system.
Sinn Fein refused to subscribe to the principle of consent, specifically as it applied to the right of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland to decide its constitutional status.
The document spoke of an inclusive talks process - the all party talks which the nationalist parties generally, and Sinn Fein in particular, have been demanding since the IRA ceasefire was called.
The objective, according to the forum document, must be "a new political dispensation representing an honourable, democratic accommodation between the two major traditions with which both can live and which is based on consent and on full respect for the concerns, rights and identities of all."
The result of the all party talks would have to be democratically ratified in referendums North and South. This would amount to "a valid and legitimate exercise by the people of Ireland as a whole of their right to self determination.
But the vice president of Sinn Fein, Pat Doherty, described it after last night's adjournment of the forum as the old unionist veto by another name.
Now this is very odd indeed. The right of the people of the North to decide the status of the North has long been formally acknowledged by this State.
THE principle was enshrined in an internationally registered agreement in 1985 an irony which escaped Ian Paisley and James Molyneaux when the Hillsborough pact was signed.
Mr Spring emphasised the point during an address to the Dail in October 1993: "No agreement can be reached in respect of any change in the present status of Northern Ireland without the freely expressed consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland free, as I have said, from coercion or violence.
"Let us once and for all accept here that, if we talk about the freedom of unionists to give their consent to constitutional change we must also recognise the freedom of unionists to withhold their consent from such change unless and until they are persuaded by democratic political means only."
A few weeks later the principle of consent was contained in the Downing Street Declaration.
Yesterday's disagreement does not put an end to the work of the forum any more than the controversy over Northern elections put an end to the admirable achievements of Mr Mitchell and his colleagues.
The trouble is that while the governments may treat each other warily for a while, the Anglo Irish Agreement provides them with a well used communications system and regular meetings ensure that relations do not deteriorate beyond the possibility of recovery.
The parties - especially the unionists and Sinn Fein - have yet to build such bridges. And disagreement on issues as fundamental as consent is no foundation on which to start.
Sir Patrick Mayhew said on Thursday: "It's ours to propose - not to command."
That goes for everyone engaged in a process that has had a bad - but far from fatal - battering this week.
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