The poignant final goodbye from the widow of Russia's first president, Boris Yeltsin, overshadowed the international elder statesmen who came together yesterday for her husband's funeral in Moscow.
Watched by serving and past heads of state from around the world, Naina Yeltsin bent over her husband's open casket to kiss him gently on the face, before her two daughters led her away.
Unlike communist-era burials beside the Kremlin, Yeltsin was laid to rest at his family's request in the area of the Novodevichy Cemetery, where the country's artistic elite, such as Dmitry Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev and Anton Chekhov, are buried.
The final unscripted moment followed a ceremony which adhered to the rites of the Russian Orthodox Church. The last time a Russian leader was buried in a comparable service was when Alexander III died in 1894.
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin, the man who led the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 and ruled it until New Year's Eve 1999, was laid to rest in a grave decorated on all sides with the Russian national flag as the country's current president, Vladimir Putin, and dignitaries looked on.
Most were contemporaries of Yeltsin, such as Britain's former prime minister, John Major and two American presidents, George H Bush and Bill Clinton.
Other countries were represented by their Moscow ambassadors, reflecting both the speed of the funeral following Yeltsin's death just two days earlier, and confusion about the choreography of the day's events.
There were no large crowds outside the church. An estimated 20,000 people had filed past the coffin while it lay in state, perhaps reflecting Yeltsin's mixed legacy in a country of 142 million.
For most Russians, the national day of mourning was a normal working day, with flags at half-mast the only visible hint of Yeltsin's funeral. In the Duma, his legacy continued to divide deputies with the opposition communists refusing to stand for a moment of silence, a gesture he would no doubt have relished.