Nobody has ever called Emily Lau a moderate: it is a term the radical firebrand might normally regard as almost an insult.
But there she was yesterday moving a motion which mildly called for nothing more than a public consultation exercise on the prospects for political reform.
It was a far cry from her usual practice of savagely criticising her opponents.
Legislators certainly noted the difference. Andrew Wong called her 'very calm and mild compared with her usual style'.
The Democratic Party's Albert Ho labelled it 'a rather pleasant manner which is most unlike her'.
Ms Lau admitted she had turned down her normally fiery rhetoric a few notches: 'People said I was not talking in my usual style, but I do have many aspects.' But there was a reason for that. Whenever she'd moved motions before, demanding universal suffrage tomorrow, or next week at the very latest, they'd always been voted down by large margins.
To have done this again would only have led to yet another defeat. So instead she took the more pragmatic approach of moving a motion so mild even the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong was hard-pressed to object to it.
