When in doubt…

I wish that you had included more about the origins of this panel. We keep thinking of Golden-Age comic-book art as crude work produced by semi-professionals who largely wouldn’t be able to hack it in the world of newspaper comic strips. Dorothy Lathrop’s piece here could easily be part of a modern graphic novel produced to the highest standards. It looks more like one of the better examples of high-end book illustration than an early comics panel. What was the name of the story and who was the author? Where and when was it published?