"What do you see in the Project," said Sara. "What does it really matter whether private or public interests control it? Who really cares?"
"Lots of people care. Jim cares."
"Pshaw!" sneered Sara. "All Jim Manning really cares about is his own pigheaded sense of race and nationality."
"Jim needs that sense for his propelling power," said Pen. "I believe that just as soon as a man loses his sense of nationality, he loses a lot of his social force. Love of country—a man that hasn't it lacks something very fine, like family pride and honor. Jim's sense of race is the keynote to his character. And just as much as the New Englanders have lost that sense, have they lost their grip on the trend of the nation. They are the type that can't do without it."
Sara eyed Pen curiously. She had turned to look out over the desert distances so that Sara saw her profile clean cut against the sky. She was only a girl and yet she had lived through much. Sara looked at her noble head, high arched above her ears; at her short nose and full soft mouth, at her straight brow, all blending in an outline that was that of the thinker, infinitely sad in its intelligence.
"That was a very highbrow statement of yours, Pen," he said, less harshly than usual. "How did you come to think about these things?"
Pen turned to look at him. "Marrying you made me," she said. "I had to use my mind. I had no family. I had no talents. I had to teach myself a sense of proportion that would keep you from wrecking me. I wanted to get to look at myself as one human living with millions of other humans and not as Pen, the center of her own universe." Pen laughed a little wistfully. "Since I couldn't mother children of my own, naturally, I had to mother the world."
Sara grunted. "Huh! Who can say my life has been altogether a failure?"
Sudden tears sprang to Pen's eyes. "Why, Sara, what a dear thing to say! And I thought you would remove my hair because of Jim's message."