“Why does not my thought about the Princess Vista become solid, and the princess be here beside me?” he asked wistfully.
“Some thoughts take a very long time to become solid,” said the Bookman, gently, “and sometimes we have to travel a long way to make them so. If you think of the princess long and hard enough, I daresay that you will go to her some day—and there she will be, solid.”
But of course as soon as Hazen began thinking of the princess long and hard, he wanted, more than anything else in the world, to be doing something that should hasten the time of seeing her, which could not well be until he had made his fortune. So thereupon he told the Bookman that he must be leaving the garden.
“I knew that the day must come,” said the Bookman, sadly. “Could you not stay?”
And when he said that, Hazen wanted so very much to stay there in the enchantment of the place, that it seemed as if a voice in his own head were echoing the words. And while he hesitated at the gate of the garden, he knew what that other voice was! It was within his head indeed, and it was the voice of that strange, fascinating Self from which he had found that he could hardly look away—the Knowledge Self itself. And then he knew that all this time in this garden, it was this voice that he had been obeying and it had been guiding him. He himself had not been king of the Selves at all. So when he knew that, he hesitated not a moment, for he saw that although the Bookman was far finer than the Merry Lad, still neither must be king, but only he himself must be king.
“Alas!” he cried, as he left the garden, “I am not nearer to making my fortune now than I was at the beginning!”
XV
KING (continued)
So Hazen left the garden and the gentle Bookman, who was loath to let him go, and hurried out into the world again.
He travelled now for many days, hearing often of far countries which held what he sought, but never reaching any of them. Always he did what tasks came to his hand, for this seemed a good way toward fortune. But sometimes the Envy Self and the Discontented Self spoke loudly in his head so that he thought that it was he himself who was speaking, and he obeyed them, and stopped his work, and until the chance to finish it was lost, he did not know that it was these Selves who had made him cease his task and lose his chance and be that much farther from fortune. For that was the way of all the Selves—they had a clever fashion of making Hazen think that their voices were his own voice, and sometimes he could hardly tell the difference.