"How?"
"Why, surely you can understand. Just think, the man is obliged to hang on the cross for twenty minutes. During this time the blood cannot circulate, and he always risks an attack of palpitation of the heart. One incautious movement in the descent from the cross, which should cause the blood to flow back too quickly to the heart, might cause his death."
"That is terrible!" cried the countess in horror. "And does he know it?"
"Why, certainly."
"And still does it!"
Here Andreas gazed at the great lady with a compassionate smile, as if he wanted to say: "How little you understand, that you can ask such a question!"
They walked on silently. The countess was thinking: "What kind of man must this Christ be?" and while thus pondering and striving to form some idea of him, it suddenly flashed upon her that there was but one face which could belong to this man, the face she had seen gazing down upon her from the mountain, as if from some other world. Like a blaze of lightning the thought flamed through her soul. "That must have been he!"
At that moment Gross made a circuit around a gloomy house that had a neglected, tangled garden.
"Who lives there?" asked the countess in surprise, following the old man, who was now walking much faster.
"Oh," he answered sorrowfully, "that is a sad place! There is an unhappy girl there, who sobs and moans all night long so that people hear her outside. I wanted to spare you, Countess."