So began her testimony. She nodded a lot. She double- and triple-checked her documents to make sure she was on the same page, literally, as Rachel Mitchell, the prosecutor appointed by the Senate Republicans to cross-examine her. When Mitchell told her the committee had offered to interview her at her home, she seemed dismayed to have misunderstood. “I just appreciate that you did offer to do that,” Blasey said. “I wasn’t clear what the offer was. If you were going to come out to see me, I would have happily hosted you and had you!”

I am not sure the Senate Republicans were quite prepared for how guileless Blasey was. Nor, do I suspect, was Mitchell, whose trap-laying style seemed designed for a witness everyone assumed would be far more canny or polished. (“I just realized I said something inaccurate,” was one of the phrases Blasey repeated over and over again, trying to help.) She was so without guile that she seemed to regard Mitchell as an ally, a means to tell her story, not even registering the prosecutor’s insinuation that her fear of flying was less than real. (“Correct, unfortunately,” she said, confirming that many of her hobbies and family obligations required taking airplanes.)

When Grassley asked her, after over an hour of proceedings, if it was true she wanted a break, Blasey looked uncertain. “I — I — I’m used to being collegial, so ...” she answered.

And that’s just the point. This reflex — to get along, to be the A student, to accommodate and ingratiate — is one with which many, if not most women, can relate. There was an unbearable poignancy to Blasey’s nervousness, an implicit apology in her performance, one that combined a deep wish to be taken seriously with a sincere desire to get things right. What seemed anathema to her was failing — getting the facts wrong, wasting everyone’s time.

It’s tiresome at this point to note that women in public life are held to more exacting standards than men are. Had Blasey seemed angry, there’s a chance she’d have seemed too angry; had she cried for too long, there’s a chance she’d have seemed too emotional, hysterical, her womb zooming freely through her body. What she did instead — instinctively — is what women have done forever in situations like these: make herself as helpful and conscientious as possible. It was adaptive. And in this case, effective — at least in that it established her as believable.