She arrived for her much-anticipated matinee performance like a shy starlet, head down and stealing coy looks at her fans.
The she turned her back and lifted her tail and she was what she is. A horse.
Black Caviar is one of the best of her breed on earth, and even though the fence around her racecourse stable was lined with television cameras, kids in her orange and black silks and mothers and fathers with snapping cameras, she wasn't going to pretend to be anything else.
Black Caviar came to Caulfield on Saturday to perform an elementary task that was as vital to her future as anything she had done in the past eight months.
She ambled around the saddling paddock, bounced on to the track and did a jig-jog past the grandstand that her trainer Peter Moody interpreted as simple joy.