The lament will persist for more than a wee while. Andy Murray brought us close, as close as we had been the past six occasions since the year Neville Chamberlain waved a piece of paper as Prime Minister and declared that peace would prevail. Closer and closer we get to this title, not farther and farther away.

Most sensed that this was our finest chance, finer than when Mike Sangster lost in 1961 to Chuck McKinley, or when Roger Taylor came off in the rain at gone 8pm, 5-5 in the fifth set against Jan Kodes in 1973, but so let his guard down that when they were called back to a deserted Centre Court, his mind had wandered and he lost the next two games.

We thought that Murray’s prospects were finer than those of Tim Henman, who played in four semi-finals here, but only one, in 2001 against Goran Ivanisevic, in which there was a real sense of destiny, only for the rain and the schedule to work against him.

So we are allowed to wail for a while before reminding ourselves that Britain has produced a tennis player of inimitable class and substance. He will come back. Peace will be restored.

Murray’s defeat by Andy Roddick is a huge blow, but to no one more than the man himself. He said, quite rightly, that he does not enter a tournament to lose but that losing is an inevitable consequence of meeting someone better on a particular day. Let us not forget to salute Roddick, a player of immense character and fortitude, second to none in his desire to lift this title.

Of course, there is disappointment because Murray remains the most real deal we have had in Britain for seven decades: a gift, a sporting icon to cherish, a strong-willed 22-year-old who will return from this a stronger individual. Do not forget that from last year’s quarter-final defeat on these courts by Rafael Nadal, of Spain,he bounced back to reach the

US Open final and the Masters Cup, and to record victories in Masters Series events in Madrid and Miami, his reputation and his game enhanced.

“I’ve got a good thing going,” he had said in Miami in April, and so he has. He knows that he has the ability to challenge the best players because he has done that over and over again and they have not fazed him. He has worked prodigiously on his physique — his legs are thicker than they have ever been — he has been able to intimidate people with his fitness (although not Roddick yesterday), which was an issue early in his career. His movement remains amazing when you consider how tall he is. The cat-and-mouse style he plays is something the game needs for spice and variety.

There will be no excuses, for Murray does not go in for them, another element of his persona that bodes well when he returns to Wimbledon next year. Every day he had to deal with questions about the hype, the expectancy, the nation that gets itself into a manic state at the very thought of a British player who can keep a rally going for more than ten strokes.

He said that he would not use the thought that others were losing their perspective by losing his own. “It’s an excuse people can use if they want — ‘Oh, I would have won the match if only you guys hadn’t written all that, because I felt the whole nation was putting so much pressure on me’ — but it is on the court where I feel most comfortable,” he said the week before these championships. “I really don’t feel the weight of expectation. It’s the last thing you are thinking about when you are hitting your first serve of the match. Playing in front of 15,000 people on Centre Court is what I want to do — that’s the part of your job you enjoy the most.”

Of the 52 matches he has completed this year, Murray has won 45. The only two performances he would chide himself for are those on clay, against Juan Mónaco, of Argentina, in the Rome Masters and Juan Martín del Potro, another Argentinian, a couple of weeks later in Madrid. The two players above him in the rankings are multiple grand-slam champions: Roger Federer has just become one of only six men to win all four grand-slam tournaments and Nadal will surely join him on that famed list one day, perhaps at the US Open in September.

So let us not weep for too long. Murray will be back, bigger and better — and that is something to cherish.