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The sun was up again during that endless summer on France's Brittany coast when Gareth Bale walked into a classroom for a discussion, which has been remembered across the six years for just one of the many words he spoke.
How many England players would make Wales's line-up? he was asked. 'None,' he replied. His discussion of Wales, England and why he wouldn't have played for the latter, even if it had meant never gracing a tournament finals, was so mesmerising that Bale left the room to a round of applause. 'We feel more pride and passion than anyone else,' he said at the Wales base in Dinard.
That confidence was borne of soaring self-belief, at what we now know was the high tide mark of a glorious Welsh footballing generation. But contrast the way Bale has assiduously avoided any perceived slight on England in his precious few public appearances out here.
Talismanic forward Gareth Bale has long been his country's hero leading the line for Wales
'I know you are trying to get me to say something about England,' he said to an innocuous question about topping the group. And your heart sank.
Everywhere you turned in the summer of 2016 there was Welsh gold dust being sprinkled on a joyless, grey, lumpen England.
After Ray Lewington, Roy Hodgson's assistant, inadvertently revealed England's team-sheet, Wales manager Chris Coleman brandished a line-up of his own which he let the cameras capture.
It was a 4-4-2 formation of Cafu, Moore, Beckenbauer, Carlos, Zico, Charlton, Socrates, Best, Pele and Maradona. Recreating such nimble spirit is nigh on impossible amid the desolation of Friday's defeat by Iran.
In the aftermath, you longed for Bale to walk into a room once more and deliver the kind of reassurance of which Dafydd Iwan, activist, politician and writer of the anthem Yma o Hyd ('Still Here') would be proud.
Rob Page's must defeat old rivals England on Monday to have an chance of progression
But it was the defender Chris Mepham insisting that these players would fight the good fight, that the
