# Counter-Strip Audit - Chapter 10

Pre/post word counts: raw draft 2,443 words vs integrated chapter 2,373 words, delta -2.9%. Sample size: 8 cuts/replacements. No >20% compression warning.

- `JUSTIFIED - cut: "He was not early. He was..." - evidence: raw mechanical gate BANNED echo-line poetics. Replacement preserves Theo's timing logic without the echo.`
- `JUSTIFIED - cut: "Not a photograph of the thing. Not a mime..." - evidence: raw mechanical gate BANNED false-profound negation. Replacement preserves Odile's rule as "Photographs are cheating. Mime is worse."`
- `JUSTIFIED - cut: em-dash logistics sentence around easel sightlines - evidence: Claude-tic audit tic 1 order. Replacement keeps the practical question.`
- `JUSTIFIED - cut: dialogue interruption "since-" - evidence: Claude-tic audit tic 1 order. Replacement loses no plot fact; June still interrupts with "Theo."`
- `JUSTIFIED - cut: "None of it underlined. It was simply..." - evidence: Claude-tic audit tic 7 theme-explanation order. Replacement "She had put all of it there and stopped" protects the image.`
- `JUSTIFIED - cut: "He tried the jar of brushes. He tried thinking..." - evidence: raw mechanical gate BANNED echo-line poetics. Replacement preserves the failed attempts.`
- `JUSTIFIED - cut: brush-washing em dash - evidence: Claude-tic audit tic 1 and tic 10. Replacement keeps the cleaning sequence.`
- `JUSTIFIED - cut: "without assistance, the way she did everything" - evidence: narrator-publicist risk and unnecessary Odile gloss. Replacement keeps her action and line.`

Chapter verdict: NONE OVER-CUT.

REVISION ORDERS: None.
