we are having an argument here about a section of our website exoeriencing very slow performance on ssl secured pages.

Someone here pretends that it's normal, since the ssl has to encrypt/decrypt all pages, including the images that are on the pages.

Does this seem consistent to you?
It seems to mee that the ssl would encrypt the lines of code that call the images, but not the image itself? Or am I saying something stupid?

does anyone know?

thanks