No one could remain unmoved by yesterday's evidence to the Hutton Inquiry from Mrs Janice Kelly, the widow of the British scientist, Dr David Kelly, and from other family members and friends.
If evidence was needed to underline that this was - and remains - a deeply personal tragedy for one family, there was no shortage of it yesterday. In one particularly moving comment, his daughter Rachel described how the father she adored seemed crushed and withdrawn in the days before his death. "I was aware that he seemed very gentle, more child-like," she told Lord Justice Hutton, "and I was very conscious that our roles were reversed and that I needed to look after him and he needed to be looked after."
Dr Kelly's family and friends gave their evidence with quiet dignity - a dignity that contrasted with the raucous political row that preceded his death. Their side of the story, harrowing at times, would seem to place beyond any reasonable shadow of a doubt that Dr Kelly took his life while in deep depression about the situation in which he found himself. It will be for Lord Justice Hutton to decide whether anything Dr Kelly said to a BBC reporter justified the public assertion that the British government had exaggerated - or "sexed up" - intelligence evidence against Iraq. But, speaking prior to the conflict, Dr Kelly seems to have had little doubt but that war was justified. As his sister, Mrs Sarah Pape, told the inquiry: "He was absolutely and utterly convinced that there was almost certainly no solution other than a regime change, which was unlikely to happen peaceably and regrettably would require military action to enforce it".
The media is already under the microscope in this saga and yesterday's evidence will do nothing to detract from that. The spectacle of reporters descending on a man's home like a pack of vultures is deeply unedifying. Few will disagree with Mrs Kelly's description of the overall situation for her husband: "It was just a nightmare." Her evidence will also make for uncomfortable reading by his employers, the Ministry for Defence: the dead scientist felt "totally let down and betrayed" by the decision to allow him to be identified as the BBC reporter's source.
It would be comforting to think that Rachel Kelly's plea yesterday might be heard. "My heartfelt wish is that as a result of your inquiry, my Lord, people will learn from the circumstances surrounding my father's death and show more compassion and kindness in future to those around them." Comforting but, sadly, unlikely. Whatever about the politics, the personal tragedy is harrowing.