once a month.

The mere fact that this was so, that it could be so, enraged him. It
seemed a renunciation of all he affirmed; an implicit falsehood. He
would have liked very much to have got to his feet, standing firmly
on his two long, well-made legs, and have once and for all delivered
himself of a final philippic. The philippic would have ended
something like this:

"And this, sir, is the last time I sacrifice any of my good hours to
you. Not because you are old, and therefore think you are wise, when
you are not; not because you are blind and besotted and damned--a
trunk of a tree filled with dry rot that presently a clean wind will
blow away; not because your opinions, and the opinions of all like
you, have long ago been proven the lies and idiocies that they are;
not even because you haven't one single real right left to live--I
haven't come to tell you these things, although they are true; for
you are past hope and there is no use wasting words upon you; I have
come to tell you that you bore me inexpressibly. (That would be the
most dreadful revenge of all. He could see his uncle's face!) That
you have a genius for taking the wrong side of every question, and I
can no longer endure it. I dissipate my time. Good-night!"

He wouldn't have said it in quite so stately a way, possibly, the
sentences would not have been quite so rounded, but the context
would have been the same.

Glorious; but it wasn't said. Instead, once a month, he got into his
dinner-jacket, brushed his hair very sleekly, walked six blocks,
said good-evening to his uncle's butler, and went on back to the