When Liz Truss ended her speech, she will have breathed a sigh of relief when she turned to soak up a sea of grinning faces and warm applause from Conservative MPs and activists.
The bitterly divisive Tory party conference was finally over, not just that she had managed to rouse those in the room and produced no major hiccups.
The prime minister's 35 minute address contained no new policy announcements and only the gentlest of nods to the division that has rocked the first few weeks of her premiership, with little of the contrition that some were hoping for.
It did the job, and almost all those leaving the conference centre will have a worse view of their leader than they had the day before.
One cabinet minister said that the speech won't be remembered and several other members of the government greeted it with a collective shrug of shoulders.
Truss said she wanted to rally the party around a common enemy, the anti-growth coalition, because she was worried that recent divisions would only have exacerbated the Conservatives' depleting poll ratings.
She painted Labour, the Liberal Democrats, SNP, trade unions and some thinktanks as protesters rather than doers, a point bolstered by two Greenpeace demonstrators who interrupted her speech.
The intervention spurred her on with the opportunity to flash a quick riposte, allowing her to appear confident and fast on her feet.
But beyond the platitudes and greatest hits catalogue of Conservative ideology a smaller state, lower taxes and increasing opportunities for all of the key details about the government s new direction were lacking.
She insists on fiscal responsibility. I believe in sound money and the lean state. She did not say anything about those words, and gave only a vague commitment to bringing down debt as a proportion of national income without saying how or when it will be of little comfort to the critics in her own party.
One MP watching from home said it was probably above some people's expectations on the basis that it wasn't a complete disaster. Another who was in the hall believed the same: She did as well as she could have done, but that only reflects the constraints she is under. Her performance has alienated some too far over the past four weeks. A former cabinet minister sighed, and I couldn't bring myself to watch her try to justify the impossible.
The same forecast is waiting for her back in Westminster, even though Truss warned of stormy days ahead due to the cost of living crisis.
The war-gaming regarding how to get rid of Truss if she doesn't win over the waverers will be in full flow when parliament returns from recess on November 23 and MPs have been reassured that the medium-term growth announcement by the chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, pencilled in for 23 November, will most likely be brought forward.
A spot on the 1922 Committee, which sets the rules for no-confidence votes, is up for grabs, and a arch-critic of Truss who wants her gone by Christmas is already campaigning to fill it.
In the last line of her speech, Truss promised a new Britain for a new era, but her inability to convince many of those in her party her plan is the right one, which means the Conservative party has not shaken off its appetite for regicide.
Prime ministers can have a catastrophic loss of authority in days or hours, but any attempt by Truss to regain control of her restless backbenchers and ministers will not succeed in a single speech. It will take months or even years.