There was no joy when the al-Qaida leader's death was announced in the Commons. Instead there was an almost glacial calm
In America, they have been whooping, waving banners from trees and chugging beer in the middle of the night, but in the House of Commons there was a slow, almost glacial calm as if the news from Pakistan had – far from being joyful – taken the edge off a glorious sunny day.
But David Cameron handles these occasions well. There was no hint of triumphalism. Almost his first words were that the death of Osama bin Laden would have "important consequences for the safety and security of our people". This meant simply: "It is not over yet."
He had, he told us, got down to business, with a meeting of Cobra (the emergency cabinet committee) "to address these consequences directly".
Maybe the first hint of congratulation came when he said that he had taken a call from President Obama at 3am on Monday.
The operation had been carried out and it had worked. Implications: Cameron knew before any of us, and Obama had decided not to fret that he hadn't been invited to the royal wedding.
(If he had, he would probably have had to skip his trip to the tornado-devastated south, plus the planning stage of the Bin Laden operation. That would not have helped his re-election hopes.)
The strange, slightly weird calm in the House only vanished when Cameron praised the courage and skill of the US special forces. There were loud cheers at that point, cheers of the type usually reserved for British military success, but for once willingly dished out to the Americans.
Then he pulled the skeins together. We should remember the many British servicemen and women who had given their own lives in the search for Bin Laden. And he reminded us that more Britons had died in the 9/11 attacks than in any other single act of terrorism.
As for Bin Laden, he posed as a leader of Muslims, but he had murdered more Muslims than people of any other faith. He had lived in luxury while others died for his cause.
Then the prime minister came as close as anyone could to a gloat: "We were raised, obviously, never to hope for someone else's death, but we are willing to make an exception in this case. He was evil personified, and the world is a better place without him."
Then the tricky bit – getting some answers out of Pakistan without alienating the entire country. Clearly Bin Laden had had "extensive support" during those years he spent holed up in Abbottabad.
But, he said deftly, we should remember that Pakistan had suffered more from terrorism than any other country in the world. About 30,000 innocent civilians had been killed by terrorists, and the country had lost more soldiers fighting extremism than all the international forces in Afghanistan put together.
Finally, he said, Bin Laden had spent 20 years claiming that the future of the Muslim world would be his. But events in Libya proved the exact opposite.
It was a fine speech, well turned, and few MPs could add much that was useful – although the former Liberal Democrat leader Ming Campbell reminded us again that the threat remained and Jihadism would have to be confronted.
Once more, as the sun streamed through the windows, a chill ran through the House.