To her father she wrote:

"My DEAR, DEAR FATHER: If I bring sorrow to your good and loving
heart by what I have done, I know that it will be tempered with joy
at my escape from a union with one from whom my soul has ever turned
with irrepressible dislike. Oh, my father, you can understand, if
mother cannot, into what a desperate strait I have been brought. I
am a deer hunted to the edge of a dizzy chasm, and I leap for life
over the dark abyss, praying for strength to reach the farther edge.
If I fail in the wild effort, I can only meet destruction; and I
would rather be bruised to death on the jagged rocks than trust
myself to the hounds and hunters. I write passionately--you will
hardly recognize your quiet child; but the repressed instincts of my
nature are strong, and peril and despair have broken their bonds. I
did not consult you about the step I have taken, because I dared not
trust you with my secret. You would have tried to hold me back from
the perilous leap, fondly hoping for some other way of escape. I had
resolved on putting an impassable gulf between me and danger, if I
died in the attempt. I have taken the leap, and may God care for me!

"I have laid up in my heart of hearts, dearest of fathers, the
precious life-truths that so often fell from your lips. Not a word
that you ever said about the sacredness of marriage has been
forgotten. I believe with you that it is a little less than crime to
marry when no love exists--that she who does so, sells her heart's
birthright for some mess of pottage, sinks down from the pure level
of noble womanhood, and traffics away her person, is henceforth
meaner in quality if not really vile.