I've been observing this discussion with increasing puzzlement, until the explanation suddenly dawned on me that I have apparently been interpreting the famous cellar scene completely differently from everybody else. (Which would explain why the fan-fiction stories I've encountered on this subject have all rung so utterly false to me, of course.)

Yes, both parties to this exchange are stilted and awkward. I thought that was the point.

Yes... meeting an old lover is awkward. Combine that with the fact she was lying to him through the course of their relationship and the jig's up, and yet there was genuine feeling and a still-burning flame, I thought the stilted-awkward approach was authentic.

(snippage Re: Anna's gushing embrace)

I think she panics, fatally.

Yes, the overdone display of emotion is out-of-character from his experience of her, thus making him more suspicious rather than less. Besides, never let someone you don't trust embrace you... that leaves their hands out of your sight. <g>

But as Avon himself recognises, in trying to kill him she is more 'honest' -- more the clear-headed, resolute woman he must have known -- than in all her over-urgent protestations earlier.

My husband has said that he thought she drew on him to give him reason to shoot her. I keep toying with the idea. I'm not at all convinced, but her motives at all times are so obscured by her ability to coolly deceive that I've never been sure of what she thought she was doing.