IF Anson Chan had been wearing her ballroom dancing togs, she'd have been waltzing round the floor.
In the confined and crowded surroundings of the press room, she restricted herself to a smile.
But what a smile. It lasted unabated for a good 10 minutes, without once deteriorating into one of those fixed grins politicians wheel out for voters, but which sharks and crocodiles reserve for their dinners.
''Can I first of all say that I am very happy . . .,'' she gushed, her voice quavering with nervous pleasure.
Had her audience not been made up of rude and cynical journalists, there would have been choruses of ''Why of course you can, dear lady'', or similar gentlemanly expressions of utter disarmament.
As Mrs Chan herself might have noted in one of her sterner moments, the word ''happy'' or its derivative ''happiness'' appeared three times in that one sentence.
