What hopes will remain for the future of the peace process if Gerry Adams decides to walk away? On Tuesday the Sinn Fein leader told reporters: "I don't intend to spend the rest of my life trying to shore up a process that is going to be in perpetual crisis". His words have been taken as those of an exhausted and deeply frustrated politician, angry that the bulk of the blame for the present impasse has been directed at him and his colleagues.
They also raise, in a very stark way, the question of what effect the suspension of the new political institutions, which now seems virtually inevitable, will have on Sinn Fein. In recent days the efforts of London and Dublin have been primarily directed at saving David Trimble's leadership of his party. Peter Mandelson emphasised the importance of this in the House of Commons on Tuesday. To abandon Trimble now would be seen as a betrayal that would even further harden political attitudes in the broad unionist community.
This has led to both governments putting a degree of pressure on the republican movement, Sinn Fein as well as the IRA, which is now having entirely predictable and dangerous results. The old, familiar sense of beleaguered isolation, summed up in the party's name, is reasserting itself. We know that Gerry Adams has told the British government that he believes his position as Sinn Fein's president will very quickly become untenable if the political institutions are suspended. The most common reaction to this news has been, "Well, he would, wouldn't he?". The inference is that Mr Adams is firing a warning shot across the bows of both governments, that there are two parties to this dispute and both need to be protected.
My own impression, from talking to republicans in recent days, is of deep pessimism about what will happen if the Executive is suspended for any length of time. The fear is that it will be extremely difficult, probably impossible, to put it together again. Over a period of weeks and months, confidence in the political process, already pretty fragile at grass roots level, will ebb even further. Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, Mitchel McLauglin and others closely identified with the move to a political strategy will be seen to have failed.
One Sinn Fein source, a staunch supporter of the peace process, told me, "Already there's a widespread suspicion that we've been suckered into this by the British government, helped by Dublin. The long-term aim has always been to destroy Sinn Fein politically. There's no pressure on the loyalists to disarm because they don't represent a political threat. If Adams is seen to have misjudged this, what else can he do but resign?"
Many readers will dismiss this as the old republican paranoia coming once again into play. But it is important, particularly just now, to understand how this crisis appears to very many people within Sinn Fein. It is not just a matter of a hundred or so IRA activists seeing the hand-over of weapons as a surrender. I do not pretend to any particular insight into the heart and mind of the republican movement. This is simply a report of what I've been told and heard, not just in recent days but over a long number of years at meetings of Sinn Fein and smaller republican groups. There has always been a profound suspicion of politics, not only within the IRA, but at many other levels. In the past, politics has always failed to deliver the holy grail of a united Ireland.
Some of these people believe that Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are cynical opportunists who have sold out for the rewards of office. Many more see them as sincere, but mistaken, in their strategy. They genuinely believe that they have been seduced by the British government, probably with the active co-operation of Dublin, by the promise of political progress. Now they are in a position where Sinn Fein is carrying all the opprobrium for the breakdown.
If, as seems likely, it is necessary to hold an election for a new assembly, Sinn Fein will be greatly weakened. (This is by no means certain, for reasons I will come to in a moment, but that is how the situation is perceived by many people.) The party's hopes of taking Dail seats will also be diminished, which would suit the political parties in this State. As Sinn Fein is seen to lose ground, there will almost certainly be a drift back to violence, sporadic at first, but gathering momentum.
This conspiracy theory, and the bleak scenario it predicts will probably sound utterly fanciful to very many readers, who lay the blame for the present threat to the peace process squarely on the IRA. It may be that the republican movement is simply preparing itself for a retreat to the political trenches, and putting forward reasons to justify this. But there is also a danger that such an interpretation of what has happened could gain much wider credibility in the nationalist community in Northern Ireland.
There is already a profound sense of disappointment that the Executive is about to be suspended. It is quite striking how many professional interest groups - doctors, teachers, farmers - have expressed their satisfaction with local politicians and a reluctance to go back to dealing with "remote, ignorant, arrogant" British ministers.
For nationalists there has been the added satisfaction of seeing their own elected representatives taking up posts in government and performing well. For the first time, many of them have felt that they are equal citizens in Northern Ireland. Now, it seems, that could be put at risk, to save David Trimble's "pretty valuable" skin. Plus ca change.
If this does prove to be the case, sympathy will swing back to Sinn Fein. Within his own community, Gerry Adams is not seen as having betrayed the peace process. On the contrary, along with John Hume, he is seen as one of its main architects. If the Sinn Fein leader does decide to resign the leadership of his party, or is forced to do so, it will be seen by very many nationalists as proving that politics, within the context of Northern Ireland, cannot work.